Free Mistress Firebrand by Donna Thorland

they were high above the fray and, for them, a riot was just another form of theater.
    Jenny dropped her blade and teetered frozen on the apron as the mob surged toward the stage. She did not know what to do.
    The Mohawks reached the footlights, and Bobby cursed. “Mr. Dearborn,” he shouted. “The lights, if you please!”
    Jenny saw the danger at once. If the mob ransacked John Street, the company could rebuild, but it would take only one candle toppled, one sconce unseated, one curtain touched by flames, to destroy the playhouse utterly, and the company’s future with it, provided they didn’t all burn to death.
    Jenny ran to the great torchère on the left side of the stage. Matthew Dearborn was already lowering the footlights, safe in their deep trough of water, into the cellar, while Bobby vaulted into the gallery and began extinguishing lights. The high chandeliers above the stage, the pit, and the gallery would be securely out of reach so long as no one lowered—or cut—the ropes.
    Jenny put out the torchère and turned to cross the stage, but the apron was seething with Mohawks smashing props and furniture and hacking at the painted scenery. She was buffeted by their bodies and by the smells of salt fish and wet wool and cooking oil and spilled beer and sweat.
    A burly mechanic in a dirty mustard shirt and leather apron took great handfuls of the main curtainand heaved until the rod started to groan high overhead. It was, after the scenery, perhaps the most essential fitting in the building.
    Jenny acted out of instinct, grasping the curtain herself and trying to pull it out of his grip. For a moment they were engaged in something like a tug-of- rope contest, with Jenny throwing all her weight onto her heels. Then the rogue let go without warning, and something—
someone
—struck her a blow that slammed her back into the proscenium door hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.
    Pain exploded in her chest. She couldn’t hear. Her vision swam. Her knees crumpled and she slid to the floor. A booted foot trampled her fingers but she could not draw breath to scream. Wind ruffled her hair and buffeted her face, taunting her because she could feel it on her cheeks and over her eyelids but could not get it inside her chest, and something—the curtain, she registered, through her haze, on its heavy bar, hundreds of muffling yards of velvet on an iron rod—hurtled down toward her.
    Another Mohawk, all grease paint and feathers and hard biting hands, gripped her by the armpits and threw her through the proscenium door into the cool darkness of the slot.
    Her back hit the flimsy canvas wall. The stage shook violently and the flats trembled as the curtain struck the stage. Her Mohawk cursed, pulled the door shut, and shot the bolt home, trapping her alone with him in the enclosure.
    She tried to cry out but her lungs would not fill with air and hot tears coursed down her face. Hands grasped her waist, hauling her up and propping heragainst the wall. They ran over her arms and legs and took hold of her stays and cut through the laces with a knife. Her rib cage expanded enough to make a strangled noise, more a whimper than a scream.
    “Easy,” said a cultured voice in the dark. “It is Devere. You are safe, and not, that I can detect, badly injured. No broken bones, in any case. You’ve just gotten the wind knocked out of you.”
    It was a narrow enclosure, just enough room for a single actor to wait his cue, but the second door, the one that led to the boxes, told its other function: a vestige of the “traditions” of the English stage, when such slots were a trysting spot for actresses and their patrons. Devere’s every move in the tiny room brought his body into contact with hers. There was no avoiding touching him as she clawed involuntarily through the dark while she gasped for air.
    He caught her hands in his and held them. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You’ll be able to breathe normally