Their creditors would allow them no more rope once Hester Dilhorne’s claim had been proved. What would happen to them after that Victor dared not imagine. Only a rich marriage could save them, otherwise they were ruined.
He devoted his efforts to trying to charm Eleanor again, but she left earlier than she had intended. Her manner to him was as pleasant as usual, but he was unhappily aware that that meant nothing: Almeria Stanton had turned her into the very model of a complete young lady of fashion, who never gave any of her true feelings away.
By the way that Eleanor had carried on about that colonial swine, Dilhorne, he had obviously made it his business to win her over—which was another nail in the coffin of Victor’s hopes.
Chapter Three
E leanor was delighted to discover that her great-aunt was also impressed by Alan Dilhorne.
‘If Ned is determined to be his friend, then I must launch him into good society,’ Almeria said decidedly to her niece. ‘He cannot be left to wander about the demi-monde, which is all that Ned can introduce him to. He deserves better than that. Ned must also introduce him to a decent tailor, since he plainly does not lack money. I shall speak to Lady Liston about him. She is the hostess of the biggest reception of the season next week, and for him to be received at Liston House will give him all the social cachet he needs.’
The shrewd old woman was not thinking solely of assisting Alan. It was plain to her that he was a steadying influence on Ned, and for that reason alone the friendship ought to be encouraged.
Ned did more than introduce Alan to his tailor. A fortnight after meeting Alan he asked him to Stanton House, took him to his rooms, called for his valet, Forshaw, and said in a manner which brooked no opposition, ‘Come on, Dilhorne, if you’re going to visit the best houses, and given that it will be some days before the tailors have your new clothes ready, you might as well be outfitted in my spares. I’ve enough to fit you up twice over, haven’t I, Forshaw?’
‘Certainly, Mr Ned, and no problem about the size, either.’
Alan began to demur, but the prospect of wearing clothes which would not raise eyebrows was too much for him. Ned and Forshaw danced around, sorting out shirts, jackets, trousers, socks, shoes and assorted underwear as assiduously as a pair of drapers in one of the new shops which were beginning to arrive in Oxford and Bond Street.
Forshaw also trimmed what he privately called young Dilhorne’s ‘errant hair’, and when he was togged out to their mutual satisfaction a trunk was filled with more of Ned’s ‘spares’ and the two of them set off to see the town.
They met Almeria and Eleanor in the hall. They had just come back from a similar expedition—ordering two more evening dresses for Eleanor to dazzle the ton in.
They both stared at the handsome pair. Almeria said faintly, ‘Properly dressed, Mr Dilhorne, it is quite impossible to tell which of you is which.’
Eleanor, on the other hand, had no such difficulty. She exclaimed, ‘Oh, no, Mr Dilhorne is the one on the left. I can’t understand, begging your pardon, Great-Aunt, how anyone could mix them up!’
‘Alan, please, Miss Hatton. We have gone beyond Mr Dilhorne, I think,’ Alan said quickly, before naughty Ned could begin to tease his sister by falsely claiming that, not at all, he was the man on the left. He was delighted, and a little surprised that Eleanor could immediately, and correctly, identify him. A girl of common sense as well as spirit, he decided.
Eleanor blushed charmingly, ‘Then if you are to be Alan, I must be Eleanor.’
‘And all the more so,’ he returned gallantly, ‘as a reward for your good sense in distinguishing me from Ned.’
‘Dam’d odd that,’ Ned told Alan, when they had made their adieux to the two women and set off together for an evening on the town. Later they were going on to a reception at the Ailesburys’, to which they had both been invited and where they would later rejoin Lady Stanton and Eleanor. ‘No one else can tell us apart, even when we’re wearing quite different clothes. Wonder how she does it?’
Alan could offer no convincing explanation, and nor could Eleanor, when Almeria Stanton quizzed her later.
‘Oh, it’s simply a feeling I have when I look at them,’ she offered hesitantly. ‘I can’t explain it. It’s something which goes beyond reason, I think.’
Her tough old great-aunt thought that there might be a very down-to-earth explanation which the innocent Eleanor was not yet mature enough to understand. She had already noticed that her charge sparkled whenever Mr Alan Dilhorne walked over the horizon, and that her eyes followed him around the room.
Whether his apparent attraction for her niece was a good thing or a bad thing she was not yet in a position to say. Though his influence on Ned was so beneficial that she decided to give him carte blanche to visit Stanton House whenever he pleased.
Others at the function were obviously ready to accept him in society: he was rapidly surrounded by a group of fascinated members of the ton, most of them women.
‘He’s already got La Bencolin after him,’ grumbled Ned to Frank Gresham, having met with a polite refusal himself from the lady who was the merry widow of Lord Bencolin, who had left her his not inconsiderable fortune.
‘Oh, Marguerite’s always after the latest sensation,’ drawled Frank, who had once scored with the lady himself, ‘and Dilhorne’s certainly that.’ He admired Ned’s look-alike: talking to him was always refreshing. One never knew what he was going to say next.
Frank had found Alan a body-servant, Gurney, who had been a professional boxer, with whom he sparred in a gymnasium off the Strand—much to Frank’s amused admiration.
‘How the devil did a great bruiser like you, Dilhorne, acquire such a head for figures? You certainly don’t resemble Ned: he possesses neither talent,’ Frank had said after watching Alan work out one afternoon. ‘Ned tells me you spend the morning grinding away in the City. He says that the rumour is that your father’s rich enough for you never to work again.’
Alan, towelling himself off, had stared at young Gresham, armoured in idleness like all the young men whom he had met through Ned.
‘Now where would be the fun in that? Look at the trouble that fellows like you and Ned have in filling your days. Some useful occupation would certainly do him a world of good.’
‘Ned? Useful occupation!’ Frank had snorted. ‘You’re light in the attic. He hasn’t the brains of a flea, poor fellow.’
‘Now, how do you know that?’ Alan had queried. ‘I doubt whether anyone ever troubled to find out.’
‘Well, he made a dam’d poor fist of it at Oxford, I can tell you, and I was there with him.’
Alan raised his eyebrows. ‘Now, what do you think that proves? That he can’t construe, or write Latin verses. What in God’s name has that got to do with anything?’
‘Better than nothing,’ Frank drawled. ‘Though I confess that my ability to recite pages of Livy isn’t exactly helpful—though it’ll be pretty impressive when I do choose to sit in the Lords, even though half my audience won’t know what on earth I’m spouting about. Be off with you, then. If you aren’t going to be a bruiser you can concentrate on making yourself even richer than you are. Better than being like Victor Loring, perpetually strapped.’
Alan asked, apparently idly, ‘The Lorings? Poor, are they?’
‘Church mice,’ agreed Frank cheerfully. ‘And there’s you, you devious devil, filthy with it, doing them out of that, too. Life isn’t fair, else I shouldn’t be ready to take my seat in the Lords and live on milk and honey.’
Alan thought that Frank was a little devious himself. He might be living a rackety life around town, but he possessed a good brain beneath his