It was with mixed feelings that Eleanor looked back over the events of the evening. She had enjoyed her dances with the Captain very much, although they had lacked the combative vigour of Mr Moretyne's attentions, and would not be sorry to encounter him again.
His cousin, however, had behaved in a most particular fashion, soliciting her to waltz a second time and earning a reproachful look from even such broadminded ladies as Mrs Benson, her nominal chaperone. Had it not been for the fact that, besides his reputation as a confirmed bachelor, he had not displayed inclination toward any of the other unattached ladies, she might have suspected him of using her as a blind to conceal the real direction of his interest.
Added then, to her strong desire to get a point the better of him, was a curiosity to discover what duplicitous game he might be playing at her expense. She refused to allow herself to consider the notion that she would not be disappointed to have a hand in thwarting his schemes.
A rap on her door made her pause in the act of sliding under the covers. "My dear, are you already in bed?" Mrs Benson's quavering voice was barely strong enough to penetrate the wood.
"Almost, but do come in," Eleanor returned, tugging the covers up to her chin.
Swathed in two shawls over her nightgown, the chaperone opened the door the smallest possible amount to slide through. "Eleanor dearest, what can you have meant tonight?"
"Do you not think that it was excessively well done of me? Two dances indeed!" Miss Thorne's eyes twinkled merrily.
"It looked so particular!" Mrs Benson dropped her voice to an impressive whisper.
"Well I do not see why you should object, when you told me yourself that you thought it would be a very good thing. Clearly removing Lord Wansbeck, too, which I flatter myself was a generous act."
Mrs Benson rocked back on her heels. "What does Lord Wansbeck have to do with anything?"
"I fancy he might provide just enough competition that the gentleman may be provoked to secure the hand of his lady before she can be swept away by another," Eleanor's tone conveyed the faintest surprise that this circumstance was not clearly obvious.
"Eleanor my dear, please tell me that you are not seriously inclined toward Lord Wansbeck!" The lady could not have been more horrified had her charge announced the intention of venturing out of doors in her nightclothes.
One curl dropped out from under her cap and into Eleanor's eyes, so vigorously did she shake her head. "There are a great many things I would do to secure my brother's happiness, but to marry Lord Wansbeck is not one of them!"
"What does Harry have to do with anything?" Mrs Benson pursued the threads of the conversation with despairing diligence.
Miss Thorne's eyebrows moved toward her hairline. "Everything, I imagine. Poor Harriet could hardly marry him without his being there."
"I see that you are tired, and in one of your secretive moods." Mrs Benson threw up her hands and retreated. "Do be careful what you are about, my dear."
"My dear Grenville, I congratulate you on your taste!" Lansworth raised his glass in his cousin's direction. "Although I had not thought you susceptible to the wiles of a fortune-hunter."
"You had not credited her with such ambition either," retorted the voice of the gentleman addressed from the depths of a comfortable chair. "The lady is reputed to be worth some thirty thousand pounds."
The Captain regarded him with a fascinated eye. "Miss Sandringham was worth forty thousand, and more beauty into the bargain, she pursued you even more diligently than Miss Thorne is claimed to be doing, and you dropped her after a week's flirtation. What are you about, Grenville?"
"I am thwarting the schemes of matchmaking dowagers with less attractive daughters to dispose of," Mr Moretyne said tranquilly. "But I do not object in the least if you also wish to try to fix your interest with the lady in question. It might do you some good."
"What if I succeed?" Lansworth parried.
"Then you shall become thirty thousand pounds the richer, and become one of the most henpecked husbands ever to be expected to provide his wife with horses. If you are quite certain you have enough port in your glass, do you think you might relocate the bottle in this direction before you completely finish it?"
"I see what it is!" the Captain declared half-seriously. "You are pursuing her stables, and she is pursuing yours!"
"How crude you military men can be," Mr Moretyne complained. "But I beg that you will not put such a thought into the head of the lady. She might decide that you have conceived a sensible notion and take it up."
His cousin was obliged to admit defeat without gaining any more information and the gentlemen parted to seek their bedchambers, but not before the Captain announced his serious intention to become better acquainted with Miss Thorne in spite of any objections raised from that quarter.