Chapter 13: Van Drecht Makes His Purpose Known — To Lydia

The card party ended, as Meryton card parties invariably did, with Mrs. Hartwell conducting a detailed audit of the evening's matrimonial prospects in the carriage home. She had identified three separate instances of Vordescu attending to Cecilia with what she classified as pointed interest, and she reported each one with the fidelity of a woman who had spent twenty years converting social observation into tactical intelligence. Mr. Hartwell sat in the corner with his eyes closed and his expression carefully neutral. Cecilia looked out the window at the dark road and said very little. Lydia said even less, which was unlike her, and which Cecilia noticed.

She noticed it again the following morning, when Lydia lingered over her breakfast with the air of someone composing sentences she had not yet decided to deliver. She noticed it a third time at eleven o'clock, when a card arrived for Lydia rather than the household generally — a small, formal rectangle of cream paper with a Dutch neatness to the handwriting that did not require a signature to identify its author.

Lydia read it, set it face-down on the table beside her teacup, and said, with the careful steadiness of someone who had prepared this particular phrase: "I believe I shall walk into Meryton this afternoon."