Joan Smith: The Barefoot Baroness

Olivia snatched up her pelisse and went downstairs, where John and his crew awaited her. Other guests were arriving. Under cover of the confusion, Olivia slipped behind a potted palm and got out without her hostess recognizing her.

"By Jove, it took you long enough!" were John's first words, after not seeing his beloved for close to a week.

"You changed the plan," Olivia retorted sharply. "I had a deuced hard time escaping from Mr. Meadows and Laura."

"It'll get easier with practice," he said nonchalantly.

"Do you have my domino?"

"Where's the spare domino, Charlie?" he called to his friend, as they hastened to their carriage.

"I don't have it. You lent it to Miss Hanson last week."

This was a new outrage for Olivia to consider. "Then you will just have to lend me yours," she said to John. "I cannot let my gown be seen. Someone might recognize it."

"Dash it, all white gowns look alike."

Angela Carstairs came to the rescue. "The fact that it is white will alert any Nosey Parkers hanging about that Olivia is a deb. You must lend her yours, John."

"I don't see why everything must be left up to me." He held the door while Olivia climbed into his rig.

She had never been inside it before. To a lady accustomed to the baroque opulence of the Turtle, it seemed a shoddy thing. It was hardsprung and crowded. Empty wine bottles rolled around the floor. The crowding allowed John to slide his arm around her, however, and she was soon distracted from lesser consideration.

"Did you miss me, John?" she asked shyly.

"By the living jingo, I missed you every hour of the day. Did Angela tell you I beat the stuffing out of Hanson in a curricle race to Brighton? Sixteen miles an hour. I won a monkey off him."

"Would that be Miss Hanson's brother?" Olivia asked stiffly.

"Who else would it be? Did they cut up stiff at Castlefield when they got you home?"

"Yes, they were horrid," she said, hoping for support.

"I would have beaten the stuffing out of Talman if he hadn't been your host. I feared he'd take it out on you."

"Oh, no, he is a real gentleman."

"Did he offer for you?" Angela asked.

Sensing that a negative might lower her value, Olivia replied, "I didn't give him the chance. He keeps calling on me ten times a day. Tonight he asked me if his twin brothers could come to my ball."

"If you're planning to fill the house with such lumber as the Castlefield lot, you can keep my card," John said.

"They have already been invited," Olivia replied. This did not seem the moment to tell him he was not to receive a card. Even her biddable Aunt Hettie had drawn the line there.

The conversation continued, mostly about the rousing time enjoyed at Gatwick, until Olivia's head began to ache. When the carriage drew to a stop on the south side of Oxford Street, they arranged their masks.

"Good God, what is that thing?" Yarrow exclaimed, when he saw her peacock mask. The feathers had become tattered from long battering under her skirt.

"It is a mask," she said through gritted teeth.

"Don't expect to be seen on my arm in that. It looks like it came off the ark. Luckily I have a spare in the side pocket.”

Olivia removed her mask and put on the blue one he handed her. It did not match the black domino and was hardly less tattered than the one John casually threw into the gutter.

Yarrow handed Olivia his domino but did not help her put it on. The elegant structure and the fashionable crowd flocking about the doorway of the Pantheon led Olivia to believe the place was not so bad as she had feared. When they entered, the magnificence of gilt trim glimmered under the light of the chandeliers. It was a moment before she realized that the guests were less elegant than the edifice. Several of the men were staggering, and the accents issuing from their companions had never been heard in a polite saloon, unless their owners were passing a tray of drinks.

"Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "This looks very-"

"I told you you would love it," John said.

"No, I do not love it. It seems horrid. But since we are here, let us have one dance, and then return to Peckford's. If we are back soon, Mr. Meadows won't know I ever left."

"We cannot stand up and jig it until we have wet our whistles," John said.

"But I want to dance now!" she insisted. It was the first time since arriving in London that a gentleman had set his wishes ahead of hers.

"I see I must tame you, wildcat," John said, but he said it with a smile that stirred a remembrance of his wicked embrace, and she went along without further argument.

Yarrow led the group upstairs, where boxes were arranged along a balcony, to look down on the dance floor below.

"Champagne, my good fellow, and be snappy about it," he ordered when the waiter came to their table.

The wine arrived. Yarrow put his hand in his pocket and drew out three pennies. "This one is on you, Charlie," he said.

Charlie came up with a shilling. The waiter stood, waiting to see the color of their money before drawing the cork. "Deuce take it, put it on my tab," Yarrow said, becoming surly. "I come here all the time."

"We don't give credit, sir."

Angela began rooting in her reticule and produced the rest of the money.

"The next one is on you," Yarrow said to Olivia. "You are the one who has a monopoly on gold."

"I thought you said tin," Charlie mentioned.

"Gold, tin-it all comes down to the same thing in the end. The little baroness is as rich as a nabob-and a dashed sight prettier."

"I don't carry money with me. A gentleman usually pays when he asks a lady out," Olivia said curtly. She felt it showed poor breeding to discuss money in pubic. And the way John said it-as though it was the money he was interested in, and not her. Really, he had behaved very badly all evening. There were never embarrassments of this sort when she went out with Mr. Meadows. But there was not this sense of excitement and adventure either. Her flesh got goosebumps when John called her a "wildcat" and said he must tame her.

The waiter opened the champagne and filled their glasses. Almost before Olivia had raised her glass to her lips, John and Charlie had finished theirs and emptied the rest of the bottle into their glasses. Olivia drank quickly. The sooner they finished the wine, the sooner they could have their dance and leave.

"Shall we go downstairs now?" she said a moment later, when the champagne was gone.

"Just one more bottle," John said. "I am dry as a cinder in the sun. Waiter!"

"You don't have any money," Angela reminded him.

"Dash it, if he won't take my IOU, he will not refuse the baroness's. Here, my good man."

The waiter ignored him. Yarrow, already deep into his cups, rose on unsteady legs and charged forward, knocking over a chair and bumping into another drunkard. The man was a large brute with hulking shoulders.

"Here, watch where you're going," the brute grumbled.

"Watch it yourself, you mawworm."

"Who are you calling a mawworm?"

"You, you ugly tub of lard."

Without further ado, the brawl began. Yarrow hadn't a chance against his opponent. He was shorter, lighter, drunker, and less trained in the bruising art. The first blow caught him on the nose and sent him sprawling against a table. Charlie was soon on his feet, pitching himself into the fray. The larger man had his supporters as well, and before long, a dozen men were beating each other.

Olivia cowered into her domino and said to Angela, "Let us leave, before the constable arrives."

"We can't leave now. This is the best part!"

She hopped up and went to watch the brawl. Olivia was afraid to join the ladies shouting around the edge of the show, for their language left no doubt that they were actresses or worse. When a hedge bird slid onto one of the empty chairs at her table, however, and began to make some very improper advances, she found courage to join Angela. She saw Yarrow stretched out on the floor with blood coming from his nose. She felt one spurt of womanly compassion, but it was not strong enough to propel her forward to his assistance. When he lurched to his feet and cast up his accounts on the floor, she was well and thoroughly disgusted.