Chapter Fourteen The Siege of the Bingley Carriage
Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam had survived Talavera.
He had survived Badajoz, where the walls ran red and good men screamed for three days straight.
He had survived a donkey in Coimbra with a personal vendetta, a French cavalry charge that should have killed him twice over, and one determined Spanish assassin who had taken violent exception to Richard's continued existence.
None of it—not the bullets, not the bayonets, not the donkey—had prepared him for watching Caroline Bingley walk away.
She moved across the ballroom floor like a flame through dry timber, her orange gown blazing a path through the sea of pale silks and exhausted neutrals.
The ostrich plumes swayed with each step—a funeral procession, he realised.
For his hopes. For whatever idiotic fantasy he had been nursing about a future that included sharp tongues and sharper wit and a woman who made him want to be better than he was.
She did not look back.
She did not hesitate.
She simply walked, her chin lifted at that specific angle he had come to recognise as I am fine and I will stomp on anyone who suggests otherwise, until she reached her brother.
Richard watched her speak to Bingley. He could not hear the words—the orchestra was playing a jig, and some fool was laughing too loudly—but he could read the set of her shoulders.
The sharp gesture of her gloved hand. The way Bingley's face cycled through confusion, concern, and finally the resigned acceptance of a man who had learned, through years of painful experience, not to argue with his sister when she wore That Expression.
They were leaving.
She was leaving.
"Fitzwilliam." Lindon's voice came from approximately three miles away. "Fitzwilliam, you need to breathe. You have gone an alarming shade of purple, and I am not equipped to explain your death to your mother."
Richard was not listening. He was watching her collect her cloak from a footman, then sweep towards the entrance. Watching her disappear through the doors without a single backward glance.
His feet moved before his brain could lodge a formal objection.
"Fitzwilliam! Where are you—bloody hell."
Richard was already halfway across the ballroom, having lost all claim to sanity, weaving through dancers and dowagers. He knocked a champagne flute from a startled baron's hand. He nearly trampled a debutante in virginal white who squeaked like a distressed mouse.
He did not stop. He did not apologise. He had spent one and thirty years being polite and courteous, and look where it had got him.
Behind him, Lindon followed in desperate pursuit.
The entrance hall was chaos—cloaks and carriages and footmen shouting for vehicles. Richard burst through the front doors just in time to see the Bingley carriage pulling away from the kerb, its lanterns swaying as the horses picked up speed.
No.
No.
"Colonel!" Lindon skidded to a halt beside him, slightly winded. "You cannot chase a carriage through Mayfair. It is undignified. Also impossible. Also—"
Richard was already running.
"—also you are doing it anyway. Of course you are. Why do I even bother?"
The carriage turned onto Mount Street. Richard's dress boots—which had been designed for looking impressive whilst standing very still, not for sprinting through London like a lunatic—slipped on the wet cobblestones. He caught himself on a lamp post, swore creatively, and kept running.
Lindon kept pace, because Lindon was loyal, and also because Lindon had apparently decided that preventing Richard from dying in a gutter was his sacred duty for the evening.
"There is a corner ahead!" Lindon gasped. "If we cut through the alley—"
They cut through the alley. It smelled of rotting vegetables and the remnants of men who had drunk too much ale. Richard's boot landed in a puddle of uncertain origin. He did not care. He had stopped caring about anything except the retreating glow of those carriage lanterns.
They emerged onto Davies Street just as the Bingley carriage approached, the horses slowing to navigate the turn.
"I have an idea," Lindon announced.
"What—"
Lindon stepped directly into the path of the oncoming carriage.
Richard's heart stopped.
The horses screamed.
The driver hauled on the reins with a bellow of profanity that would have made a sailor weep with admiration.
The carriage lurched to a halt approximately three inches from Lindon's extremely polished boots.
"WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY—" The driver's face was a mask of rage and terror, his whip hand shaking. "ARE YOU TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED, YOU BLITHERING—"
"Good evening!" Lindon smiled brightly, as if he had not just risked becoming a decorative smear on Davies Street. "Terribly sorry for the inconvenience. Lovely night for a drive, is it not? My colleague requires a word with your passengers. Military business. Very urgent. Life or death, really."
"I'LL GIVE YOU LIFE OR DEATH, YOU CORK-brAINED—"
Richard did not wait for the negotiation to conclude. He wrenched open the carriage door and threw himself inside as if he had been launched from a cannon.
The interior was dimly lit by a single lamp, casting shadows across the occupants. Bingley sat on one bench, hovering somewhere between alarm and utter befuddlement—his natural state, really. Miss Bingley sat opposite, her orange gown pooling around her like molten sunset, her face a mask of ice.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Bingley cleared his throat, desperate to fill the awkward silence. "I say, Colonel. Do you need a ride?"
Richard ignored him. His eyes were fixed on her, who was staring at him as if he were an offensive species of insect that had crawled into her reticule and refused to leave.
"Miss Bingley." His voice came out ragged. Desperate. Not at all the calm, collected tone of a man in control of the situation. "I need to speak with you."
"No."
"Please—"
"No." The word could have frozen champagne.
"I have nothing to say to you, Colonel, and I have less than no interest in hearing whatever tactical manoeuvre you have planned for this ambush.
" She adjusted her gloves with sharp, precise movements.
"Remove yourself from this carriage immediately, or I shall have the driver do it for you. "
From outside, the driver's voice carried clearly: "I'D BE DELIGHTED TO, MISS. JUST SAY THE WORD."
"I am not leaving until you hear me out."
"Then I shall have my brother throw you out."
They both looked at Bingley.
Bingley was examining the ceiling of the carriage with intense fascination, clearly wishing to be literally anywhere else. "I would really rather not get involved," he murmured to the upholstery. "Physical confrontation is not my strong suit. I once lost a wrestling match to a footstool."
"Charles!"
"It was a very sturdy footstool, Caroline. Ottoman, I believe. Excellent craftsmanship. The point is, I feel I would not acquit myself well against a decorated military officer, and I should hate to embarrass the family name."
Outside, Lindon's voice drifted through the window, still maintaining his cheerful diplomatic tone: "—and I must say, your reflexes are extraordinary. Truly. The way you stopped those horses? Masterful. Have you considered a career in the cavalry? We are always looking for men with steady hands."
The driver's response was anatomically creative and physically impossible.
Richard turned back to her. She had not moved. She had not softened. She sat like a statue carved from contempt, her eyes burning with a fury that made his chest ache.
"Miss Bingley." He leaned forward, his hands braced on his knees. "I know what you think. I know what you believe about my motives. And I am telling you—I am begging you—to listen to me. Just for one moment. That is all I ask."
"Why should I?"
"Because I love you."
The words fell into the silence like stones into still water.
She did not react. If anything, she grew colder—which Richard had not believed possible, but she had always excelled at exceeding expectations.
And then she laughed.
It was not a kind laugh. It was not a surprised laugh. It was the laugh of a woman who had been offered a counterfeit coin and found the forgery personally insulting.
"You love me." She repeated the words as if tasting arsenic. "How remarkably convenient. How perfectly timed. You love me now, Colonel—three weeks before your father's deadline, when you have exhausted every other option and discovered that fortune hunters cannot, in fact, be choosers."
"That is not—"
"Tell me, Colonel." She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a razor's edge.
"How stupid do you think I am? Do you imagine I have forgotten the mathematics?
You require a wealthy wife by Easter or you are shipped to the West Indies.
I possess twenty thousand pounds. You have spent weeks sabotaging my prospects whilst pretending to help me find a husband.
And now—now—when I have finally seen through your charming little stratagem, you leap into my carriage like a deranged highwayman and declare your undying love? "
"I am not—"
"You called me a lemon, Colonel." Her voice cracked, just slightly, before she forced it back under iron control. "And now you expect me to believe you have developed a sudden taste for citrus?"
Richard had nothing to say.
Because she was right. He had called her a lemon.
He had sabotaged her suitors. He did need her money—or at least, his father's ultimatum required him to need it.
Every piece of evidence pointed to exactly the conclusion she had drawn, and he had nothing—nothing—to offer in his defence except the truth.
And the truth, apparently, was hilarious.