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“My mother.”
“Are you going home?” Mr Parker asked.
“No,” Georgiana replied. “I am going to stay with m-my-” she hesitated, “-a relation.”
Mr Parker nodded. “Well, I am sure you will find everything you are looking for there.”
“I am not so sure,” Georgiana sighed and met his gaze when she realised he was looking at her, waiting for her to explain. “I don’t know what I am looking for.” She realised then how inane that sounded and sighed again. “I mean, I do. I just need to stay with my aunt for a while. I just cannot get what I want now. It has gone forever. So I need to go and stay with my aunt so I can decide what I need to do.”
Now that she tried to explain it aloud she realised just how confused and uncertain she sounded. Mr Parker seemed to understand though and nodded thoughtfully.
“For yourself,” he murmured. It wasn’t a question.
Georgiana looked at him. “I suppose you consider me terribly selfish.”
“Not at all my dear. It is highly noble of you to do such a thing. However, if you would permit me to say just one thing?”
Georgiana nodded, pleased to have another person’s perspective on her problems.
“I should like you to think very carefully about what you are doing. If you truly can see no other way of resolving the situation that troubles you so then you must do what you must. It is up to you and you only. There are other ways to rid yourself of a certain situation, and it may not mean sacrificing everything you have ever known.”
“How?” Georgiana whispered. He had no idea what her circumstances were and was only trying to help, but he didn’t understand the hurt she carried so couldn’t really advise her. “I am in this by myself.”
“If going to your relation is a way of stepping away from whatever problem troubles you, then I would recommend you go,” he held up one finger. “But not only that, stay there. Remember, you can never run away from yourself. Your problems will always stay with you. At some point you will have to stop and deal with whatever troubles you. So, when you get to your relative’s home stay there, no matter what anybody says to you - until you consider it is right to move on. Hopefully, you will decide to go home again. If not, then you will naturally accept that whatever it is you left behind was never right for you in the first place. It is a certain set of circumstances you have been born into not something you have chosen for yourself. As such, you will need to break free from it, to end whatever misery it brings you. As long as you keep yourself safe, and don’t take unnecessary risks, what harm can there be in taking time to yourself for a while?”
Georgiana snorted. “My mother will undoubtedly be a weeping, wailing husk of misery by now who cannot possibly carry on until I am returned, and my father will be pacing before the fire, blustering as always. Neither of them will make any attempt to do anything practical themselves. They will turn to my brothers, who will huff and puff and reluctantly come after me if only to order me to return home so they can go back to their lives. If they run true to form they will then try to blackmail me, or threaten me but then will try to cajole me, and then plead outright for me to do as Cecily demands. When they fail, as they invariably do, they will send Will.”
“Oh,” Mr Parker murmured with a nod. Whoever this Will was, he had a strong influence over Georgiana given the way her breath hitched whenever she spoke his name.
When he began to study her carefully, she realised that Mr Parker was waiting for her to tell him more. “Will is a family friend,” she sighed. “He was–is–my brothers’ friend.”
“Oh,” Mr Parker murmured again.
Georgiana squinted at him when he continued to stare at her but his gaze was more thoughtful than probing. When he didn’t ask her anything else, she turned her attention to the village they travelled through. People were going about their day on the street outside, seemingly unencumbered by the issues that faced Georgiana. She wished she could be one of them.
“If only,” she whispered.
“Pardon?” Mr Parker murmured.
“Nothing,” she replied with a sigh. She had no intention of telling him about any of that.
As they left the village behind and began to journey through yet more countryside, Georgiana turned her thoughts to what Mr Parker had said. She was right to leave, in spite of the worry she had caused her parents. It still didn’t ease her conscience.
“I don’t feel guilty,” she whispered.
“You shouldn’t,” Mr Parker replied. “Sometimes you have to be selfish, especially if you are surrounded by people who don’t really see you.”
Georgiana nodded. “They never do,” she replied honestly. The worst culprit for that was Will.
“If he cares about you, he will come after you but only because he wants to make sure that you are alright,” Mr Parker murmured gently into the silence.
Georgiana considered denying there was any ‘him’ in this sorry tale of woe, but couldn’t bring herself to lie to him.
Instead, she shook her head. “I don’t want him to come after me. He doesn’t care about me. If he does turn up, it will be because he is duty-bound to do so because of his association with my family. It will never be because he cares about me. He is engaged to someone else,” she replied, unmindful of how much information she had divulged Mr Parker, who shifted in his seat and studied her a little more closely now that she had revealed a bit more information.
“So he can’t come after you,” he said with a nod of understanding. “Well, that’s his loss then, isn’t it?”
Georgiana offered him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I don’t want to see him again. Really, I don’t,” she whispered. “I just need to get on with my life now and forget about everything I left back in Cranbury.”
