Page 43 of A Quiet Affection

“Must you go? You can’t wish to live with tradesmen.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Don’t believe what your Papa says aboutthat. Mr. Gardiner is a very good man, and he has always been very kind to me, and he was the one who purchased that dissected map of Europe for me, the one you’ve always loved. You’ve heard many of the letters he has written to me—it is impossible for you to not agree that he is a very gentlemanlike man.”

“But he’ll be busy; he won’t have the time to take care of you, the way you need him to.”

“Georgie, I don’t wish to have anyone take care of me. I would much rather care for other people.”

Georgiana tightly hugged Elizabeth. “I’ll miss you! I’ll miss you! I will! I swear!”

“I know.”

“You always have taken good care ofme! You have! You have. And when I’m grown, and I’m an adult, you’ll come to live withme.”

Elizabeth laughed. “You’ll marry.”

“I won’t. Or if I do, you can live withus.”

“Maybe.IfIdo not marry before you, I rather like the idea.”

“Oh, yes. You might marry…I wish nothing ever changed.”

“Sometimes, I do too.”

“That’s why you don’t want to live with Jane. She would try to always take care of you and wouldn’t let you care for her at all.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth replied, surprised that Georgiana saw that. “And I dislike Wickham.”

“You don’t like George,” Georgiana said with some surprise. “Why ever not?”

Elizabeth shrugged.

Suddenly she remembered that time years ago, when she heard Wickham engaged in carnal relations with one of the maids.

Elizabeth felt cold.

She should tell Jane. She should warn Jane that he had already done such things, so that she could know before she married him.

“Lizzy, why not?”

“I don’t think he is an honorable gentleman,” Elizabeth said slowly. “Not like Fitzwilliam.”

“Well, of course no one is likeFitzwilliam,” Georgiana replied with all the confidence in her brother that could be imagined.“But he can be quite nice. And he always says such sweet things to Jane. He is so gallant.”

“You cannot believe he means most of the nonsense he says,” Elizabeth replied.

“Oh, if only you couldseehim, you would see how there is always goodness in his looks.”

“I do not trust him, and I know him to have done things he should not have.”

She should tell Jane.

But then Jane would likely marry Wickham anyways, but she would have damaged her sister’s happiness, and right before the wedding. That wouldn’t be right. That wouldn’t be the sort of thing a kind sister would do.

“What did Wickham do?”

It wasnotElizabeth’s place to tell Georgiana about such things. Well-bred girls were supposed to know nothing about carnal relations, what a man ‘knowing a woman’ in the bible meant, or what it meant when someone ‘went into their wife’. The story of Onancertainlyshould not be understood by any daughter of a gentleman.

Papa had thought differently about these matters, but he had been dead for a long time. Elizabeth did not know if she should tell Georgiana about them.