The mobile strapped snugly to her thigh buzzed, a quiet vibration to which she tried very hard not to react.
After three years as Countess of Asherton, she didn't even blink.
Her hand invisible beneath the table, she slipped her hand through the slit in her skirt - and then the slits in three layers of petticoats - to fish her mobile out and read the text glowing on the screen.
With a twitch of her napkin and the touch of a button, the glow vanished.
Across the full length of a table for twenty, she raised an eyebrow at her husband.
Did you get it, too?
The subtlest of nods. Yes. Time to make our excuses. You first.
"Pardon me," she murmured politely to the MP on her right. "I'll return in a moment."
He nodded graciously; she rose from her chair and left, dusky lilac skirts swishing behind her as she ostensibly left for the ladies'.
Instead she hurried up the spiral stairs to the master suite, kicking off her heels and stripping off her hose and fancy knickers.
Her husband arrived a moment later, his hands immediately going to work on her dress. "Don't worry," he murmured in her ear. "Mother and Judith will take over. We're clear."
"Good," she huffed. "It's going to be a long drive to London."
He chuckled warmly; the laces on her gown came away at last, and she slipped the confection and its multiple layers of undergarments off, tugging on a worn pair of jeans and fiddling a warm hunter green jumper over the peak of her tiara.
Wait.
Her blasted, bloody, impossible tiara.
Tommy must have seen the curses flit across her face before she could say them, and raised an eyebrow even as he shrugged into his own jeans and jumper.
"It'll take an aeon to get this mess off," she huffed, jabbing at the concoction of a French twist on her head, hairsprayed to within an inch of its life and, Barbara was quite sure, disinclined to move should it be hit by a hurricane. She tugged gently on the tiara, and winced when all she could feel was a few strands of hair coming free.
"So don't," he suggested, and nearly laughed at the outraged look on her face.
"You want me to go to a crime scene in a bloody tiara?" she hissed.
He shrugged. "Or we can wait here for two hours while you do - " he gestured vaguely, "whatever it is you do to dissolve that. Your choice, love."
She scowled darkly for a moment, then grabbed her coat and bag and headed for the door.
He followed, barely muffling the snicker.
"Oh my," said Winston Nkata, several hours and one long drive later. "My lady. To what do we owe the honour?"
"Shut up, Win," she snapped, and shoved her coat at him.
"Formal dinner," Tommy muttered in his ear as his wife stormed toward the crime scene. "I give it an hour before she's more grateful you got her out of it than she is that you made her turn up here in that, I assure you."
Nkata nodded slowly, and was exquisitely polite to Barbara for the rest of the night. But true to form, as she got more involved in the scene, she utterly forgot she was wearing the thing.
Fortunately, she was also so involved in the scene that she failed to notice any of the multiple double takes sent her way.
They made it back to Belgravia Square somewhere around six in the morning. Barbara dove into the bathroom and went to work with industrial-strength shampoo and conditioner; an hour later, her hair lay in damp but blessedly un-hairsprayed strands against her oversized t-shirt and the tiara was nowhere to be found.
She checked her phone one last time as she crawled into bed, and couldn't help but giggle as she saw the text from Judith, sent four hours earlier.
You owe me.