Chapter 20: Van Drecht Acquires an Ally

The difficulty with a neighbourhood like Meryton, Van Drecht had concluded by his fourth week of residence, was not that it was impervious to alarm. It was that it had already allocated all available alarm to matters of dress, precedence, and the precise composition of card party guest lists, leaving none in reserve for anything genuinely requiring it.

He had tried Mrs. Fenton, who had listened with every appearance of attention and then asked whether he thought the Count's waistcoat at the Netherfield party had been embroidered in Paris or merely Brussels. He had attempted a strategically weighted conversation with Mr. Pemberton, who agreed that Continental customs were often a great deal more irregular than one liked, and then spent twenty minutes describing an incident with a French wine merchant in 1804 that he considered analogous. The neighbourhood was not stupid. It was, which was considerably worse, comfortable.

Lieutenant Ashford presented himself as a different order of problem entirely.