“How good that you have a friend who will not think the worse of you for being less splendidly lodged than himself.”
Philip slammed down his cutlery. “My grandfather was a viscount, Sir Charles. Do tell us how old is the creation of your baronetcy?”
It was mortifying to her to see Philip thought ill of, but equally distressing to see him challenge Sir Charles’s rudeness. It was unlike him to rise to censure anyone. Sir Charles, indeed everyone, was struck, and when Philip looked ready to continue his attack, Eleanor gave Philip a look, but it was such a look that restored him to his senses. He closed his lips and instead gestured to the waiter to bring everyone more wine, although she saw he drank none himself.
Sir Charles cleared his throat and apologised, saying, “I had not meant to be condescending,” and then Dryden made idle talk with his sister about their connexions and who lived where and other senseless chatter to fill the room until they were finished. The men went to the coffee room, although Eleanor suspected Philip would soon retire rather than be pleasant to Sir Charles.
Eleanor pleaded a headache when Alice asked her to join her in her parlour, and she had tea alone at eight, readied for bed by ten, and still Philip had not come in. She needed to tell him that nothing untoward had happened with Sir Charles. She wondered if he might join her in their shared parlour, to read or to stay up to work on one of his mathematical questions, but Philip never entered once.
He must be sitting up alone in his own chamber and avoiding me.
How strange to think that she was waiting up in her dressing gown to talk to Philip, and by the end of the summer she could be waiting up in the same attire to go to bed with her husband. She knew rationally that she would eventually have to share a bed with Sir Charles. It would be wise to reconcile herself to it sooner than later, however difficult it would be. She would always compare it, she was sure, to being with a man she did love.
“I have a strong mind,” Eleanor whispered to herself. She knew she was strong in character, strong in sense. What Sir Charles had attempted at Longtown Castle was not uncommon. She had only been unprepared for it, but by the time she signed her name Eleanor Sudbury, she would have been accustomed to kissing him, accustomed to the idea that he would expect her in his bed every night.
I can endure sharing a bed with Sir Charles.She had already endured a great deal—degradation, disdain, isolation—and could endure anything but more hopeless years at Northanger. She was strong enough to endure a permanent break with Philip and a marriage of convenience to an ambitious man whom she did not love.
Eleanor thought of what she had felt at Longtown Castle while kissing Sir Charles, and compared it to what she had felt every time she put her arms around Philip. Would one final encounter with Philip make it easier to marry someone else? Likely not, but she still had to tell him that what he thought had happened at the castle did not happen. Eleanor’s feet carried her out of her room and through the private parlour to knock on Philip’s door.
He did not answer, but she went in anyway. Philip was wrapped in a banyan, a single candle was alight, and there was a book open on the bed. He must have stood abruptly from reading when he heard the knock. Even in the dim light, she could see in his face that he was still angry. He sighed wearily and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Eleanor, there is no need to talk about it,” he said.
She had seen him dressed for bed before, in January at Northanger. Tonight felt similar to how she had gone to him then. Dressing gown open, hair down, stockings off. But of course, the spectre of a marriage to Sir Charles and their permanent separation had not been with them that wondrous night.
Eleanor came farther into the room, stopping just in front of him. She hated to see Philip looking at her with such coldness. His arms were still crossed, and she rested both of her hands atop his arms. “He only kissed me—”
“I said there was nothing to explain.”
“And then I pushed him away.”
Philip dropped his arms, but a sudden alertness came into him. “Did he stop?” he asked in a tremulous voice. Eleanor tilted her head in confusion. “Did he stop when you pushed him away, or did he—”
“He stopped!” she cried, understanding what had frightened Philip. “You must fear nothing on that count. Sir Charles stopped when I told him to.”
His shoulders released some of their tension, but he still looked no happier than before. “And if you have your way, you will be his wife by the end of the summer and will have no right at all to refuse him.”
Eleanor gave Philip a long look and said softly, “I am here with you because I want to be.”
Philip reached an arm around her and pressed a hard kiss against her mouth. It took her by surprise even as she eagerly responded. He twisted a hand into her hair and with the other pulled her firmly against him. He ground his lips against hers and then slid his tongue between her lips with a quiet groan.
He kissed her roughly, much differently from the slow way he typically enjoyed kissing her. Even in stolen moments, Philip never kissed her with this urgency, and left it to her to set how intense the embrace would be. Still, this was how it was supposed to feel when you kissed someone. Eleanor breathed raggedly against his lips and enjoyed his tongue in her mouth, his tight grip on her hair.
He leant back and gave her a fiery look before tugging on her hair to turn her head, showing him her throat. He sucked and bit with a delightful frenzy she had never felt from him before.
“I cannot stand that he was the last man to kiss you,” he said into her ear, before kissing a path down her neck and forcefully tugging open the tie at the top of her night shift. Philip usually asked before he touched her, even though she had told him time and again that she had already granted her permission.
Even though he was more vehement than ever, she felt the same feverish longing she always felt with Philip, so unlike the tension and reluctance she had felt when Sir Charles tried to embrace her. Philip reached his hand down her night shift and roughly kneaded her breast. He had never been so forceful with her before, so eager and desperate, but she loved it. He nipped at her throat with his teeth, and then bent lower to suck hard on her nipple and squeeze her breast until a low hum of pleasure sounded in her throat.
Philip then pulled back, dropping his hands from her. There was a visible flush to his cheeks, and a tight expression on his face. “Are you still resolved to have him?”
She gasped in surprise, and that seemed all the answer Philip needed. He actually recoiled, wrinkling his nose in disgust and even taking a small step backward. “How is it so easy for you to marry elsewhere?”
“Easy?” she cried. “I am angry and heartbroken that this is what a woman must do to have any authority over her own life!”
He gave her an incredulous look. “And yet, as angry and heartbroken as you are, you intend to go back to Sir Charles, to win him? Did you think that one last time with me might make it a little easier to bear being with him?”
“It was not like that,” she said tightly, “and you know me well enough to know that!”
