Joan Smith - The Barefoot Baroness

"You mean there is a picture of me in a shop window?" she exclaimed. "How exciting! I must see it. Whoever would have thought-and I didn't think I would make a dent in society."

"You will bowl it over, I promise you."

"I don't suppose there will be many ladies as rustic as I am," she said. "But really a cartoon is no compliment. More like an insult. Do I look horrid?"

He studied her a moment and said, "Now that I have had the opportunity of seeing you more closely, I cannot say it is a flattering likeness. But then I, as an artist, appreciate the impossibility of capturing such liveliness on paper. It is no insult, I promise you. You are in excellent company, flanked by the Prince Regent on one side and our Prime Minister on the other."

"Why, I am practically famous!" she laughed, and turned to relate this marvel to Laura, who had already heard the story from Mr. Meadows.

Laura was uncomfortable to see Olivia with this infamous rake and spoke rather stiffly. "Don't let it go to your head," she said. "The cartoon is of the berlin, not you."

"I don't know why everyone makes such a fuss about my carriage. It was my Cousin Laura who insisted on the landau," Olivia explained to Hyatt. "She is up to all the rigs."

Hyatt's dark eyes slid to Laura. He wondered at her lack of enthusiasm in this meeting. He was not a vain man, but as he spent half his life running from ladies, he had thought a provincial miss would be pleased at his company. Miss Harwood's stony face made it clear she was far from pleased.

"Shall we return to the carriage now?" Laura said to Meadows.

"We just got here," Olivia pouted.

"Let us walk on a while," Meadows suggested, and they continued.

They walked four abreast now, Laura walking between Hyatt and Meadows. Hyatt addressed himself to Olivia, and Laura listened.

"You are wearing a new coiffure, if I am not mistaken?" he said.

"Yes, my cousin said I should. Monsieur LaPierre gave us both a new do."

"Is Miss Harwood your chaperone?" he asked.

Laura heard the question and was seized with rage. Chaperone! She was only twenty-two.

Olivia just laughed. "Good gracious, no! My aunt and Mrs. Harwood are chaperoning us. We are both on the catch for a husband. But Cousin Laura is so fussy!" she added in a confidential tone.

Hyatt turned and saw Laura glaring at him. "It does not pay for even an Incomparable to be too fussy," he said, with a mischievous smile that at once acknowledged his own solecism, her anger, and his exaggeration of her charms to appease her-and laughed at the whole affair.

Laura's anger melted like a snowflake in the oven. There was something about the man… One felt she had been set apart when he smiled at her. Laura said saucily, "I had not thought to hear Lord Hyatt recommend a lack of fussiness. You will not even paint less than perfection. How then can you expect a lady to shackle herself for life to just anyone?"

"You misunderstand me, ma'am. I am not recommending you take up with just any old yahoo-some such derelict as Lord Hyatt, for example. No, I am sure your suitors all hopped out of the very top drawer. Yet you were too fussy to choose among them."

"Just so," she said, with one of the new ironical smiles she had assumed for the Season. She could banter just a little with someone like Hyatt, but she was relieved when his attention returned to Olivia.

"Have you arranged for your portrait yet, Baroness?" he asked.

"My aunt is going to write to Sir Thomas Lawrence today."

He stopped walking and just stood, looking at her. That hair would be a challenge. It flamed like fire. A nice contrast to her complexion. The girl was a hoyden-a new style of model for him. He was becoming bored with society matrons.

"Tom is very busy just now," he said. "Mind you, he would do a bang-up job. If he cannot squeeze you in, let me know. I'll make time for you. It would be a shame for you to come all the way from Cornwall and not return with your portrait-as well as a husband, of course. Let us not forget the prime reason for your visit."

"Would you do me?" Olivia said at once. "I would much rather be done by you, for you make everyone look so pretty."

He inclined his head to her and said in a flirtatious way, "One would have to be a bad artist indeed to make you look anything else but charming, Baroness."

"I would have to be chaperoned," she said. "My aunt would never let me go alone to your atelier."

If he took offense, he did not reveal it by so much as a flicker. "All my young lady models are chaperoned," he assured her. "But I do not allow a crowd of friends. A noisy audience distracts me. You, I fear, will already prove distraction enough," he finished, with a reckless smile.

"Mr. Meadows and my cousin have already offered to chaperone me," she replied. "Two friends will not be too many?"

Lord Hyatt agreed to this, and it remained only to set the hour. They stopped in the shade of a mulberry tree and sat on a bench.

Olivia looked all around and said, "I wish I could take off my shoes and stockings and run through the grass. I do it at home. It feels like cold velvet on your feet."

"Daresay you'd step on broken glass or worse here," was Meadows's mundane reply.

"Besides making a vulgar display of yourself," Laura added. She was unhappy that Meadows had somehow set up this meeting. She realized now that the purpose of it was to get Hyatt to paint Olivia. She did not in the least look forward to those endless sittings, while the two gentlemen flirted with Olivia and she sat twiddling her thumbs.

Lord Hyatt sat silent, just looking, first at Olivia, then around at the spreading park, which was dotted with trees. He was planning his portrait and realized that none of his studio props suited this girl from the wilds of Cornwall. She was at home to a peg in the great outdoors, where the vivid greenery complemented her fiery hair. He would paint her without a bonnet. He thought of her wish to take off her shoes and run barefoot through the grass. That was how he wanted to paint her. But where?

"What we must do is come some morning early, before anyone is here, and let you have a ramble barefoot," Meadows said, with a doting smile at the baroness.

Hyatt's head turned to Meadows. Now there was an idea! With his full schedule, early morning sittings would suit him very well, and at that hour, Hyde Park would be deserted.

"Let us come tomorrow morning," he said.

Olivia blinked. "Do you like running in the grass barefoot, too, Lord Hyatt?"

"No, but that is how I should like to paint you."

Olivia frowned. "That is not how you painted the other ladies," she pointed out.

"I try to place each model in the background that suits her. I see you outdoors, in some such place as this."

"But without my shoes?"

Meadows wanted to appease Hyatt and said heartily, "Why, Baroness, that would suit you right down to the ground. Bare feet-ground. A pun, I daresay. Said you liked to feel the grass."

"Definitely without your shoes," Hyatt said, "and without a bonnet as well. You must be physically in touch with the earth and the sky."

"That latter requirement will call for a very long ladder," Laura said. The whole affair sounded very bizarre to her. She was afraid Hyatt intended to make sport of Olivia in his painting.

Hyatt sensed her mood and replied coolly, "Not in a painting. The model's head and shoulders are often set against the sky. No doubt you have noticed that in pictures, the earth and sky meet. It is called perspective."

"I trust it is only her head and feet that will be in contact with nature. You do plan to permit her to wear a gown?"

A pink flush rose up the column of Hyatt's neck, to color his face. "When I wish to paint a nude, I usually hire a professional model. Society is rather prudish in that respect, though I personally think that all ladies ought to be painted without their clothes. The human body is the greatest challenge for an artist. We can get away with miscalculating the dimensions of a tree or a building, but if a human body is out by more than a small fraction, we are soon caught out."