Chapter 25: Van Drecht Moves on Thornfield Abbey

The cold that settled over Meryton that night was the particular cold of late January, which had none of December's picturesque qualities and all of its severity. It arrived without ceremony, pressing down on the valley and stiffening the mud in the lanes to something nearly negotiable, and it was under this cold, at half past nine in the evening, that Pieter Van Drecht walked from his lodgings to the militia's winter quarters carrying a leather satchel, a lantern he did not yet light, and the settled composure of a man executing a plan he had been refining for six weeks.

He had told himself, at various points across those six weeks, that he was being patient. He recognised now, with the clarity that came from having finally committed to action, that he had been hoping the situation would resolve without him — that Cecilia Hartwell would arrive at the correct conclusion, or that Vordescu would make an error conspicuous enough to require no interpretation, or that the neighbourhood itself would perceive what was in front of it and act accordingly. None of these things had occurred. The neighbourhood had instead concluded that the Count was a romantic prospect. Cecilia Hartwell had concluded something considerably more complicated and had apparently decided to sit with it. And Vordescu had conducted himself with the precise, careful performance of a creature four hundred years in the practice of being mistaken for a man.

Van Drecht had therefore stopped waiting.