Any recognizable characters are solely the property of Miss Heyer's incomparable imagination. It is my hope that their social standing may not be materially damaged by association with my own.
It would have been hard for a casual observer to imagine a prettier picture than the one presented in Hyde Park, London, on a spring morning. The two young women strolling among the blooms were very different in appearance, one being tall and dark with an air of decision, while her companion was slight and fair and frail, but as both were considered ranked among the Season's beauties, and both were dressed in the latest of fashions, an onlooker would have no cause for complaint.
"Will you promise not to think me very foolish if I ask you a question?"
The words were so unexpected that Eleanor's head lifted. To be sure, Harriet was prone to blurting out her frivolous thoughts without first pausing to consider how they would sound, but she rarely prefaced them with a warning. One of her fine dark brows winged upward. "Well, I should have to hear the question before judging of its sense."
Harriet nibbled at her lower lip for a moment. "How do you discourage a gentleman who won't be discouraged?"
"My dear, you simply tell your father that you are being made uncomfortable, and ask your father to have a word with him," Eleanor said in some amusement. Her own forceful personality made her consider such qualms missish, even if her father had been alive to offer the fraternal protection which the more timid Miss Webster seemed inclined to need.
"But I cannot be sure that Lord Wansbeck is serious in his intentions!" Harriet protested. "He has not said anything openly, only sometimes there is such a look in his eye—and he never allows me to cry off from dancing with him. I should sink through the floor if my father warned him about attentions which he had never desired to bestow!"
"A most praiseworthy sentiment," Eleanor agreed, the merest quiver in her voice.
"You know exactly how to fri—how to make a gentleman understand that you do not desire his attentions," Harriet's pale complexion tinted pink as she hastily amended her words.
"You mean I know how to frighten men away," Miss Thorne said calmly. "That is very true, and I daresay it comes from being accustomed to managing my brother's house. But this is only my first Season, in spite of my age and experience, and you have just as much knowledge of the ton as I."
"You even dare to snub Mr. Moretyne," Harriet pronounced the name with a reverent tone.
"Mr. Moretyne is a provoking, detestable, intolerable man!" Miss Thorne announced stormily, her earlier good humour quite vanished. "The only reason he continues his unwelcome advances is because I refused to be dazzled by his wealth and status and accord him no more attention than any other gentleman! Depend upon it, if I had followed in the footsteps of every other girl in London and fallen at his feet he would not have given me a second glance!"
Harriet regarded her friend with some awe. "But Mr. Moretyne is the most eligible bachelor in all of England! Do you not find his pursuit flattering?"
The hapless daisy between Eleanor's fingers was crumpled suddenly. "My dear Harriet, that is a more foolish question than the other! Have I not insisted from the day of our first encounter that I despise the man? I would give much to be rid of his—" She broke off to pick another daisy, but seemed not to see that the flower was deformed.
Miss Webster, watching anxiously, recognised the expression on her friend's face as the same look that had preceded her appropriation of her brother's curricle-and-four to drive down to Richmond, and waited in some apprehension for what would come next.
It was not long in coming. "There is one sure way to give a gentleman a disgust of one!" Eleanor declared, a dangerous sparkle in her eye.
"Eleanor, you are not surely proposing to begin some scandal?" Harriet said, aghast.
Miss Thorne shook her dark curls emphatically. "Why did I not think of it before? I have only to pretend that I am eager to engage his affections, and he will flee at once!"
"But Eleanor—!" Harriet clapped a hand over her mouth, lest opposition strengthen her friend's resolve.
"I will begin at the ball tonight," Miss Thorne dropped the daisy as she plotted Mr. Moretyne's comeuppance. "I shall dance with him, accept his invitations to drive out, encourage his flirtations, until he is thoroughly convinced that I am on the catch for him!"
In accordance with her plan, Miss Thorne chose a pale pink gown over a white satin slip which set off her dark hair and eyes, and sat a great deal more still than was her wont as her maid dressed her hair in shining ringlets, in order that no fidgeting would disturb the perfect appearance of her toilette.
Even her brother Harry, not usually observant in the matters of feminine apparel, was moved to exclaim, "By George, Eleanor, you do look smart tonight!"
Miss Thorne adjusted the spangled scarf around her shoulders with a small smile. Tonight Mr. Moretyne would be thrown quite off his balance.
Any brother and sister of good birth, who presented such a handsome appearance as the Thorne siblings, would have made a hit in Society, but with the added inducement of wealth and property it was no wonder that they were welcomed with open arms to the bosom of the ton. Within minutes of their arrival at Lady Sefton's ball they were separated and Miss Thorne was besieged by an eager crowd of admirers that almost engulfed her meek little elderly chaperone.
She had just promised the Boulanger to Lord Moleneux and bestowed her hand on Mr. Epworth for the opening set of country dances when her sharp eyes spotted an unmistakable figure across the room.