plot, secret plan, game - a secret scheme to do something (especially something underhand or illegal); "they concocted a plot to discredit the governor"; "I saw through his little game from the start"
Verb
1.
counterplot - make a plot in response to another plot
plot - plan secretly, usually something illegal; "They plotted the overthrow of the government"
It may, perhaps, be a question, whether the art which he used to conceal his passion, or the means which honest nature employed to reveal it, betrayed him most: for while art made him more than ever reserved to Sophia, and forbad him to address any of his discourse to her, nay, to avoid meeting her eyes, with the utmost caution; nature was no less busy in counterplotting him.
At the same time, moreover, he calls attention to the vigorous, even violent, male counterplotting triggered by a wife's efforts to monitor her husband's extramarital mating activities.
Or think of the "The One Where Everybody Finds Out" episode from the fifth season of Friends, in which Phoebe and Rachel plot to play a practical joke on Chandler and Monika, but then the plotting and counterplotting get slightly of out hand.
