Her breath came fast, and she was starting to feel faint. Even if Sir Charles became a negative quality to her happiness, he must have value as the master of her house, the father of her children, the person who would support her public consequence. He would feel her merits in his home and in his career, and would that not be enough? She only needed to get away from Northanger.
Eleanor looked at Sir Charles and thought of living with him, of sharing his bed, of having him be her dearest friend for the rest of her life. She felt agitated, miserable, and unequivocally angry at how he had touched her and at every word he had said to her. He thought so slightly, so carelessly, so unfeelingly toward her. She still wanted to be everything to her husband, and it seemed no one, not even her, could be essential to Sir Charles.
She tried to swallow, and it took her several tries. “I thank you for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is impossible.”
Sir Charles snatched back his hand. “I beg your pardon? Are you trying to increase my love by suspense?”
He did not love her. “No, no I am not intending to plague you. I am serious in my refusal.”
“You have treated me improperly and unworthily!” he cried.
Yes, she supposed she had. He may not have had a heart to lose, but she had encouraged him and now could not follow through on her intentions. “I am sorry that I found we do not suit after all, and that my feelings in every respect forbid me to accept your generous proposal.”
“I have courted you so well, so liberally, so properly, and with your father’s sanction,” he said, rising to stand over her, his handsome features contorted in anger, “and this is the reply I am to expect?”
Her father would expect Sir Charles to come to Northanger to pursue her, and she must now tell General Tilney it all came to nothing. She closed her eyes in anxiety. “I am sorry, exceedingly sorry to have hurt you.”
“You have wasted my time!”
He was red in the face with his hands on his hips and his chest thrown out, standing over her and glaring. He was not pale with disappointment; he was not a wounded heart struggling for composure. Sir Charles was not a villain, but he would not mourn her loss. He would mourn not having won what he thought would come to him easily.
“I say again and again how sorry I am. I do not feel the affection for you that you deserve.”
“I thought we had decided but a few days ago that an ardent love was unnecessary.”
“I was wrong,” she whispered. Eleanor steadied her breathing and strove to speak clearly. “I have come to realise how wretched, and how unpardonable, and how wicked it would be to marry without affection.”
Sir Charles lifted his chin and his lips flattened. “You are a foolish, irrational prude who does not know her own mind, and I have nothing else to say to you. If you dare to speak to me in public, I would not even deign to touch my hat.”
He turned without bowing and stalked from the room.
Eleanor’s mind was all disorder as she thought about what would happen now. Her brother was still banished from Northanger, she had no friends at home, her father would be more oppressive than ever now that he censored her letters, he would be frustrated that she had lost a baronet with twelve thousand a year, and Philip would never respect her for what she had attempted to do. Life at Northanger would be lonelier, more hopeless than it ever was.
The past, present, future, everything was terrible.
ChapterTwelve
“Damn it,” Philip muttered, pushing aside another scrawled sheet of calculations that led him nowhere near to an answer.
The resolution ofThe Diary’s prize mathematical question eluded him. It was now the second Tuesday in May, and Philip had been at work on this question while in Herefordshire and for the three days since he had been back in his house in Belleville Village. He usually could work happily by his front window, lost in thought for hours, or even days if his mind was particularly engaged, but he still had no solution.
The initial velocity of a 24 lb ball of cast iron, which is projected in a direction perpendicular to the plane of the horizon, being supposed equal to 1,200 feet per second; and that the resistance of the medium is constant as the square of the velocity, and everywhere of the same density. Required is the time of flight, and the height to which it will ascend.
He ought to have solved this by now. The force of gravity was known, but what was the space that might be uniformly described by the ball in vacuo, while its motion was destroyed by resistance? He should use Mr Simpson’s theorem of fluxions, and other English mathematicians would agree. But Mr John Bernoulli considered air to be an elastic medium. Were the air particles elastic or non-elastic?
Philip rubbed his eyes and stepped away from the table, pacing the room. His concentration was not what it once was. Even when he tried to solve for both theorems, he made foolish mistakes.
That was exactly what Eleanor was doing.
He knew why he could not concentrate on a single sensible thing. Eleanor might have received a proposal before she left the Longtowns to return to Northanger yesterday. Would Sir Charles soon visit the Abbey for a season of courtship before he took home his bride? General Tilney would be delighted for his daughter to marry a rich baronet, and since Eleanor wanted to be free from home, it would likely be a short engagement.
It twisted his stomach to think of Sir Charles Sudbury at the Abbey, sleeping in the same room that Philip had stayed in last January. The walls were papered, the floor was carpeted, the furniture, though not of the latest fashion, was handsome and comfortable. The same room where Eleanor had quietly slipped in and insisted on sharing his bed.
Could Sir Charles persuade Eleanor to join him in that room, or would she wait until they were married and she no longer had a choice? The thoughts were a torture to him, even though he knew he ought not to think of it. Rather than concentrate on his calculations, Philip could only think of would Eleanor and Sir Charles also rock the curtains of that bed. Would Eleanor blush prettily for Sir Charles, be as eager and curious and affectionate as she had been with him that night in January?
Philip supposed it would not happen if General Tilney was in residence. But it would ultimately happen, and he had best overcome it. Philip looked around his parlour as he paced. He was happy with his situation in life, not truly begrudging his father for his habits of expense that did not leave him better provided for. He was a gentleman by both blood and by behaviour. He had never wanted to be a viscount; he had not been jealous of his uncle or his cousin. He had steady friendships, had connexions he enjoyed, had work that he found satisfaction in completing.
It galled him that the reason he wished for a little money was just to make an overbearing, mercenary man like General Tilney approve of him as a suitor. Philip decided to go for a walk to clear his mind of all thoughts of Eleanor.
