He left the retired little village, situated between gently rising hills, and past the small stream and the church standing on a knoll. Once beyond the village, there was nothing to be seen except Belleville Hall itself. He was half a mile from his cousin’s property, and from here he could command a view of the grounds. Philip knew he was welcome there at any time; he had been encouraged to come and go whenever he pleased when it belonged to his grandfather, his uncle, and now his cousin, but it never felt like home.
He wanted to live in his small stone house and receive his intimate friends, not be a viscount in a grand hall. He wanted to work on his calculations at his leisure, not tend to duties in Parliament every winter. He wanted to marry Eleanor and be everything to her that she could be for him, but several thousand pounds a year and her refusal to defy her father prevented it.
Wandering the grounds for a while did little to settle his mind, so Philip went back to the village. On the return walk, he wondered if he ought to have spoken up for Eleanor to her father. Frederick and Henry had never criticised their father for how he treated her, or even themselves; it might be too much to expect a dependent woman to stand up to a man like General Tilney. Even grown and titled men dreaded disobliging the general.
Eleanor might be terrified by the thought of defying him. However, it was not his place, as the son of the general’s wife’s second cousin, to assert that Eleanor needed General Tilney’s greater consideration.
He stopped to pick up his letters. Vaughan wrote that he had celebrated his daughter’s birthday—not that he had addressed on paper Lady Metcalfe’s child as his own. He seemed happy in being with Lady Metcalfe and in seeing his little girl.
As Philip sat in his chair in the parlour to finish the letter, he thought it a shame that Lady Metcalfe had married elsewhere when she and Vaughan were so well-suited. As he neared the end of his cousin’s letter, he read:
I am brought a little low by a spring cold. Even with such an ill state of health as I laboured with when I was young, you need not fear for me. Perhaps Lady Metcalfe’s daughter, with whom I have been spending most of my time, has brought home some sniffle and shared it with her favourite visitor. I am not ill in a paralytic way, my dear Brampton, so do not write to me of doctors and asthmas and coughs or anything of the like. I am not obliged to lay aside the pen or to lessen my attentions in reading or tending to my business and family affairs. I am obliged to now come away; little Phoebe has come to give me a kiss and to have me listen to her read.
I am, dear sir, your affectionate cousin,
Vaughan
Rather than resume the calculations that continued to challenge him, Philip replied to Vaughan, wishing him better health and urging him to take care of himself so he could better spoil his young friend who so enjoyed his company.
Vaughan had never spoken of why Lady Metcalfe had not married him, or why Lord Metcalfe had mistresses and did not care if Vaughan resided in his house. Philip wondered how Lady Metcalfe was forced into a marriage to an indifferent husband many years her senior.
Would Eleanor refuse Sir Charles Sudbury if he offered? There was nothing less likely. Once Eleanor decided on a resolution, she calmly and persistently saw it through. Philip sighed and opened another book of mathematical tables.
* * *
Although she loved Alice—shewas a dear friend and full of liveliness—Eleanor had been eager to leave Welland yesterday. The last two days of their fortnight stay had felt twice as long since Sir Charles’s behaviour toward her had changed. She would have preferred to be ignored to the point of rudeness, but whenever they had to share a room, his air became pointedly stately, the displeasure heavy in his voice whenever he was forced to speak to her.
The worst for her was when Lord Dryden had said something or other about not winning a horse at an auction this spring, and Sir Charles had looked at her while consoling his friend, saying, “Not to worry, Dryden. Often the blessing denied begins to quickly lose all its value in our estimation. Besides, one brood mare is as good as another.”
He was suffering from angry pride, but Sir Charles suffered in no other way. Although she felt guilty for encouraging a proposal that she could not bring herself to accept, Eleanor felt certain that he had no genuine regard for her. She would have preferred his resentful silence, but the rest of the visit was filled with her uncomfortable feelings and his peevish allusions.
She doubted her father had noticed the change because even as the carriage was called to take them back to Gloucestershire, General Tilney, with great politeness, said how happy they should be to see him at Northanger whenever his other engagements might allow him to visit them. Sir Charles had only bowed and then given her an icy glare when the general’s back was turned.
General Tilney had talked of Sir Charles visiting Northanger the whole ride home, and Eleanor had deflected these hints as best she could, hoping they would soon subside. However, they had now been home two days, and the subject was not yet dropt. After her father had complained about the dinner Eleanor had ordered—could not a green goose have been had instead, and oysters should have been in season for another week—he returned to his first object.
“I think Sir Charles is a young man with everything to recommend him: not merely situation in life, fortune, and character, but with more than common agreeableness, with address and conversation pleasing to everybody. I suspect very soon he will accept our invitation to Northanger.” He paused to take a bite of the food he had just disparaged. “You must have been aware of a particularity in Sir Charles’s manners to you.”
Eleanor could listen no more. She prepared herself to face her father’s resentful temper, of his disappointment being expressed in a raised voice or with threats of forcing her into Sir Charles’s company. “I am afraid, sir, that from something Sir Charles said, he does not think me a suitable partner. I believe he wished me to understand that he would not be paying me his addresses.”
“What?” he said, banging down his cutlery. “Did you discourage him?”
Of course, his first instinct would be to blame her. “I acted the same as I had always done.”
General Tilney was silent for a moment before he shook his head in displeasure. “I suppose that you had the wish to marry him—the natural wish of gratitude for an eligible proposal—had it come your way.”
“I, yes, something of the sort, but I am not disappointed.” The truth was mixed in that sentence somewhere.
“The matter will be put before you soon, I suspect,” her father said. “If not Sir Charles, then some other suitable man will take you from Northanger.”
Her father had never before alluded to her marrying and leaving home. “Would you not miss me, when such an offer comes my way?” she asked as lightly as she could, a little fearful of the answer.
“No, I should not think of missing you if you were married to a man of such good estate as Sir Charles. Besides, every young woman’s duty is to accept an unobjectionable offer.”
“I consider it... not quite possible that we should have been happy together, had Sir Charles asked me.” She was confident that Sir Charles’s wounded pride would forever prevent him from admitting to another soul that Miss Tilney had rejected him.
“As he did not ask, and you do not think he will, it does not matter.” She could sense his disapproval in not securing a proposal. “But it brings to mind that the matter of your marrying is soon to be at hand. As the choice of a husband is of the greatest consequence to your happiness, be sure you make it with the utmost circumspection. As for title, I have no pretensions. Certainly I do not,” he added, and Eleanor knew to believe the opposite.
Her throat felt dry, and she took a quick drink of wine as she thought of Philip. “What of money?” she asked faintly.
