As they wandered into the barn and Aoife's eyes rapidly adjusted to the slightly dim environment, who should she see standing to attention? Not one, but both Wigfall children, Lord forbid that Aoife spend even a second away from them. Almost like a bad joke it was, so much so that she probably would have returned to the practice right then and there if she hadn't insisted on her presence against Robert.

The ring itself presently looked more like a patch of dirt with some wooden stakes scattered haphazardly around it than a real puglist's arena, and knowing Hector and Jemima, that trend would probably continue for some time yet.

"What d'ya think?" Mr. Crabbe proudly asked.

Aoife said nothing. She was still a little miffed that Robert had agreed to this at all, but of course, as she had reasoned back at the doctor's; it would be far from her to change his mind.

"Oh, I've fought before with nothing more the crowd bein' the ropes of the ring ye might say. I remember once when I punched me opposite number how he fell back against the crowd and some big mug shoved him hard right back toward me.  Right inta me fist he did. I won that fight by knockout it must be said."

Aoife grimaced. Quite literally thousands of years ago, slaves fought to the death for the sake of their master's entertainment, and here they were, in a so-called 'enlightened age,' arranging very similar bloodsports. She wasn't so naïve as to declare violence nonessential to the modern world, but for the sake of profiteering and amusement it all seemed quite... savage.

Nevertheless, Mr. Crabbe seemed very taken with Robert's tale of barbarity, and Aoife's attention began to wander as the conversation devolved into the specifics of seating arrangements and fight timing. The dirt beneath their feet seemed solid now, but come fight night it would probably become a quagmire of gore and sludgy sediment. The nurse found herself wondering just how well the ring posts would hold up in softer earth, and by extension; what it would mean for the fighters, to be slugging away at each other with no boundaries between them and the sweaty hordes of bloodthirsty onlookers. If Robert's story and Crabbe's enthusiasm were anything to go by, the verdict on 'crowd participation' would be very lax indeed.

The Wigfall pair made their way over, and for once it seemed as though Aoife was getting more of a goggle-eyed look from Jemima than Hector. She returned the expression in kind with a thinning of the lips that could have been interpreted as a greeting, then settled back into her stony repose.

"So, you're the feller who's gonna flatten Charlie Wentworth!"

"Who is this Charlie Wentworth, anyway?" Aoife cut in. "Scholar...? Tailor...? Farmer...?"

Ah, he'll be a pushover! The bigger they are, the harder they fall." Announced Hector dismissively, which did absolutely nothing to settle Aoife's qualms about the whole thing. In fact, they had now been told that this Charlie was, in fact; 'big', implicitly more so than Robert.

She had no opportunity to voice her opinion, however, for the creaking of the barn door to their rear heralded the entry of yet another party in this debacle.

"Probably not."

He was fairly handsome, with a touch of the debonair and confidence that spoke to his success. This was a man, just like Mr. Crabbe, who made his fortune off the backs of others, though judging by the ease with which he carried himself, there was some great modicum of self-assurance in his swindling. He tipped his hat to her (a hat? indoors? really?) and she replied with a quick "Sir" out of respect. She trusted him no more than she trusted Lorenzo, but got the feeling that he could out-talk any one of them, and demanded to be recognized as such.

The two frontmen seemed to size each other up, an ironic mirroring of the more physical confrontation that both of them facilitated, and though these swindlers would assuredly never come to blows on their own terms, there would undoubtedly be a duel of the more verbal sort.

"Kids, this is Charlie Wentworth's cousin and, no doubt by now, chief trainer, Ben Simons. So careful what you say. I think I can let you know, Ben, that this is your Charlie's opponent, as of ten minutes ago: Bob Cullen."

Jemima quite suddenly shouted something so loudly that Aoife never even registered it, sheer volume doing more for her than the content of her words ever could. All Aoife could manage was to merely wince along with the others. After a few months in the Wigfall boarding house, such sporadic and unintelligible outbursts seemed mundane.

"Hector here's Bob...er, Bobby's second, and this here pretty young lady is our personal medical advisor, Miss Nurse Leane."

Now that was something she could react to. Personal medical advisor? To a backstreet brawl which would undoubtedly end in splintered bones and wounded pride? Even if the matter had been raised beforehand, she'd still have had some very firm words to say about it. How would it look, not just for her own reputation, but that of Jonah, and the doctor's office as a whole, to be associated with all of this?

"I am here as an observer, nothing more, Mr. Crabbe." she strategically imparted, matching her eyes with both those of Lorenzo and Mr. Simons in turn. "Should I have any information to impart pertaining to the medical situation at hand, it will be for the benefit of those affected, rather than the sake of any particular camp."