Chapter Four The Orange Beacon
Richard sat in the shadows of Robert's box in the King's Theatre in Haymarket.
It was spacious, luxurious, and draped in a red velvet and gold that felt oppressive in the heat of the packed house.
Beside him, Georgiana looked relaxed, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes fixed dutifully on the stage.
Madame Catalani, a soprano with lungs like a bellows, was currently dismantling a Mozart aria with a series of trills that sounded like a bird being strangled.
"She is very… spirited," Georgiana whispered, her gaze not leaving the stage.
"She is loud." Richard adjusted his cuffs. "If the French army possessed her lung power, we would have surrendered the Peninsula without a fight."
Georgiana suppressed a smile, hiding it behind her fan.
Richard turned his attention from the stage to the audience.
He preferred the pit to the performance.
Human folly was always more entertaining than Italian opera.
The semi-circular rows of the theatre were a sea of muted tones, blacks, greys, the occasional dark blue, punctuated by the pale muslins of the debutantes.
Then his eye caught the beacon.
In the tier below the boxes, a splash of colour assaulted the gloom. It was a dress of aggressive, unrepentant orange. Not the soft hue of an apricot, nor the rich tone of a sunset, but a jarring, garish pumpkin shade that clashed violently with the crimson velvet of the theatre seats.
"Oh, heavens," Georgiana breathed, her hand tightening on her fan. "Richard, please tell me I am mistaken. Surely that is not… Miss Bingley?"
Richard leaned forward, narrowing his eyes.
The woman wearing the orange atrocity sat with a posture so rigid she might have been strapped to a board.
Her red hair was piled high, adorned with feathers that bobbed with every movement.
Even at this distance, the curve of her neck and the proud, elegant tilt of her chin were unmistakable.
"It is Miss Bingley," Richard confirmed, his voice dry. "And your brother's friend, Mr Bingley. And the Hursts."
Georgiana shrank back into the shadows of the box, as if the orange fabric might physically reach up and taint her own reputation by mere association. "She wrote to me only last week regarding the latest fashions. She did not mention… that."
"It is a tactical error," Richard muttered. "She intends to be seen, to be admired for her boldness. Instead, she looks like a piece of tropical fruit dropped into a coal cellar."
"It is dreadful," Georgiana whispered, looking pained. "Fitzwilliam would be apoplectic."
"Darcy is in Derbyshire with Mrs Darcy, and I wager his thoughts are miles away from the likes of Miss Bingley," Richard noted.
The curtains dropped, the candles were lit by the servants, and the interval began.
Richard did not move to fetch refreshments, not willing to abandon Georgiana.
Instead, he watched the group seated beneath them.
Charles Bingley looked amiable and vacant, as usual.
Beside Miss Bingley sat her sister, Mrs Hurst, who looked asleep, and her husband, Mr Hurst. The man was swaying.
Even from thirty feet above, Richard could see the heavy, flushed complexion of a man who had consumed his dinner in liquid form.
Mr Hurst stood up. Or rather, he attempted to stand, failed to locate his centre of gravity, and listed heavily to the left. He collided with a footman squeezing down the aisle with a tray of refreshments.
Glasses shattered. A bottle of wine hit the floor and rolled under the benches.
"More!" Hurst bellowed, his voice carrying over the din of the crowd. "Boy! Bring the claret!"
He lunged for the waiter, grabbing the man's lapels. The poor servant stumbled back, nearly dropping whatever was left on his tray onto the lap of a dowager in the row ahead. A ripple of angry murmurs spread through the surrounding seats.
"Oh, no." Georgiana grasped Richard's sleeve, her face draining of colour. "Richard, everyone is staring."
"Steady," Richard said, placing a hand over hers.
Below, Bingley fluttered his hands, patting Hurst's arm uselessly. "Come now, Hurst. Steady on. Let the man be."
"Unhand me, you puppy!" Hurst roared, shoving Bingley backward. Bingley stumbled, knocking into a gentleman behind him, who stood up and shouted in protest.
Richard watched the scene with the detached, clinical assessment of a tactician. Hurst was large, heavy, and fuelled by brandy. Bingley was light, polite, and useless. The crowd in the pit was beginning to turn. Men were standing up, pointing, and jeering.
Miss Bingley sat frozen. She did not shrink away or cover her face.
She remained amidst the wreckage of broken glass and social ruin, her back straight, her gloved hands gripping the arms of her chair so tightly he imagined the wood might splinter.
She was surrounded by the mob, burning publicly and completely, but she refused to turn to ash.
A group of young lords, equally inebriated, began to jeer. "Go on, Hurst! Give him a left hook!"
Hurst raised a fist, his face a mask of sodden fury. He turned not on the waiter, but on Miss Bingley, who had dared to place a restraining hand on his sleeve.
"Do not touch me, you harpy!" he shouted, raising his hand.
Richard was moving before he made the conscious decision to leave his seat.
"Stay here," he ordered, his voice brooking no argument. He did not look at Georgiana. "Do not move until I return. If any person enters the box, you are to scream."
"Richard—"
He was already gone. He exited the red velvet sanctuary of Robert's box and descended the stairs two at a time, his boots striking the wood with a heavy, rhythmic cadence.
He reached the ground floor and pushed into the auditorium, using his shoulders to part the throng of intermission strollers. He did not ask for passage. He took it.
He reached the end of the Bingleys' row just as Hurst grabbed Miss Bingley's wrist.
Richard stepped into the cramped row, forcing people to pull in their legs. He did not shout or bluster. He simply occupied the space with the sudden, overwhelming pressure of a thunderhead.
"Mr Hurst." Richard's voice was low, pleasant, and utterly chilling.
Hurst blinked, turning his bleary eyes on the intruder. "Who the devil—?"
Richard stepped into the man's personal guard. With a movement too fast for the drunkard to follow, he seized Hurst's right wrist, the one holding Miss Bingley, and applied a specific pressure to the radial nerve.
Hurst's eyes bulged. His hand sprang open. He made a sound like a leaking pipe.
"I believe," Richard said, maintaining the painful grip while smiling for the benefit of the watching crowd, "that you are feeling unwell, sir. The heat of the pit can be overwhelming for men of delicate constitution."
"My arm," Hurst wheezed, his knees buckling. "You're breaking my arm."
"I am supporting you." Richard tightened his grip until Hurst went up on his toes. "Mr Bingley, if you would be so good as to take his other side? We shall escort your brother-in-law to the street. He requires fresh air. Immediately."
Bingley stared, his mouth agape, before scrambling to obey. "Colonel! Thank God. Yes! Yes, of course. Fresh air. Just the thing."
Together, they hauled the groaning Hurst out of the row, navigating him past the annoyed spectators. Richard cast one glance back over his shoulder.
Miss Bingley and her sister sat alone in the centre of the disaster, the empty seats beside them acting as a quarantine zone.
Her orange dress was crumpled. A splash of wine stained the hem.
She met his gaze, her eyes wide, dark, and shockingly vulnerable.
He gave her a sharp nod, a command to hold her ground, and dragged her tormentor towards the exit.
It took ten minutes to deposit Hurst into the Bingley carriage. The man passed out the moment his head touched the squabs. Bingley remained outside, wringing his hands, offering apologies that Richard ignored.
"Go with him, Bingley," he said, dusting his gloves. "Ensure he does not choke."
"But—my sisters," Bingley stammered. "I cannot leave them alone in the pit. If you could perhaps…"
"I will ensure they are returned to your residence when the performance concludes. Go."
Bingley fled. Richard turned and walked back into the theatre. He found Miss Bingley in the corridor behind the stalls, standing near a pillar. She had retreated from her seat. She stood wrapping a shawl tightly around her shoulders to hide the orange silk.
She saw him approach and straightened. The mask of haughty disdain slammed back into place, though he saw the cracks in the porcelain.
Richard stopped in front of her. He waited. He expected the reach for the reticule. He expected the coin. He expected the insult designed to restore her sense of superiority. Here is a shilling for your trouble, porter.
She looked at his hands. Then her eyes lifted to his face. Her throat worked.
"You have no right." Her voice trembled. "To handle my family affairs."
"I have every right to prevent a brawl in a public theatre," he replied calmly. "It disrupts the music."
She stared at him. The fight drained out of her, leaving her looking tired and young. She took a breath, and for the first time since he had known her, she did not look at him as a poor relation or a servant.
"Thank you," she said. The words were stiff, foreign to her tongue, but they were audible. "I… I owe you, Colonel."
Richard blinked. He felt a strange sensation in his chest, a shifting of tectonic plates. He recovered quickly.
"I will collect one day, Miss Bingley," he murmured, his voice dropping to a register that made her eyes snap back to his. "I never forget what is owed to me."
"I imagine you do not," she whispered.
"Go back to your seat," he ordered gently. "Sit through the second act. Do not let them see you run. I will arrange for a carriage for you and your sister after the play ends."
He turned on his heel and walked away before she could answer.
Back at Robert's box, Georgiana was very still, her hands clutching her fan, counting the seconds until Richard returned.
She knew Caroline Bingley's ambition and the desperation that coated every letter and every invitation to tea.
But she had never seen the desperation laid so bare as it was in that orange dress, surrounded by the rougher sort in the pit.
When the door to the box opened, she nearly jumped. Richard slid into the seat beside her, smelling of cold air and violence. He looked perfectly composed, though his cravat begged to differ.
"Is it done?" she whispered.
"It is handled, Georgie. Do not fret. The opera resumes."
The lights dimmed and the curtain rose upon the first London production of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, a choice that served only to agitate the Colonel's burgeoning headache.
Madame Catalani, draped in the ambitious silks of Vitellia, launched into an aria with such a deluge of unnecessary vocal ornamentation that the original melody was quite buried beneath the debris of her trills.
It was a display of technical vanity that mirrored the very atmosphere of the theatre, a place where the music was merely a polite excuse for the occupants of the boxes to dismantle the reputations of those beneath them.
Richard leaned his shoulder against the red velvet hangings of his brother's box, his eyes tracking not the vengeful Roman princess on the stage, but the flickering orange light of Miss Bingley's gown in the pit.
Georgiana watched her cousin. Richard leaned forward, his arms resting on the gilded ledge, his gaze fixed intently on the semi-circular rows below.
Georgiana followed his line of sight.
Caroline Bingley had returned to her place in the pit. She was sitting next to her sister. Her back was rigid and she held her head high, defying the whispers and the stares of the crowd surrounding her.
Richard watched her. He watched her with a focus Georgiana had never seen him apply to a woman. He watched her the way he studied a map, or a chessboard, or a fire that threatened to jump the grate.
"Richard?" she asked softly.
He did not answer. He did not blink. He simply watched the crowd, and the woman burning in the dark.