Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [68]
I stood as still as I could, in the frozen position he had put me in; I could not help but laugh at such theatricals. Elizabeth was just as bad; she kept her eyes forward in the correct pose, but she tickled my waist whenever the painter was not watching. Mr. Zoffany was staring at me now, with a little frown. "Miss Dido—if you would be so good as to touch your finger to your cheek just here—most becoming." I obeyed. "Exquisite," he murmured. "What contrasts!"
"Mr. Adam, his Lordship's designer, you know, says variety is all," I remarked.
"Very true, very picturesque," said Mr. Zoffany, his hands moving as fast as dragonflies.
"That's why he designed such a little vestibule leading to our Great Stairs," I told him.
"Is it?" murmured Elizabeth, her eyes stealing to her novel.
"He once told me that the large goes with the small, the narrow demands the wide, the bright calls out for the sombre; beauty depends on contrast."
Mr. Zoffany suddenly smiled at me over his canvas, and beckoned me with one finger.
I ran to took over his shoulder at the preliminary marks on the canvas, and suddenly I saw what he meant. It was indeed a study in contrasts. Elizabeth was shown against a great dark bush—how her face and dress would glow like an angel when they were painted in—while my sketched figure stood up as black as the plums I was carrying, black against the pale sky in my white turban, with one black finger pointing to my black face as if to say, look, look.
I did not know what to say. But the painter, absorbed in his work again, was not asking my opinion, so I went back and stood in position. Elizabeth, peeking at the next page of Evelina, rested her hand on my elbow for support. Oddly restless, I looked past the little lakes of our estate, over the ripening fields, the land gently sloping south for miles down towards Greenwich Hospital and the famous cathedral of St. Paul's. I often asked my great-aunt to take me into London, but she always said it was a wearisome place, and not healthful for a girl. If I narrowed my eyes I could just make out the Thames, speckled with traffic. I thought of my mother, who had been part of the cargo of a Spanish ship when my father had boarded it. My earlobes were beginning to ache under their weight of gold.
The housekeeper came out on the terrace to look for me. "There's a visitor here for Lord Mansfield, Miss Dido; I keep telling the fellow the master's out, but he won't go."
"I'll see to him."
I ran up the Back Stairs to change out of my costume first. But when I stepped into the Hall in my blue polonaise, ten minutes later, I stopped short. The stranger was gazing up at the portraits of my great-aunt's ancestors. He was tall, with an unfashionably long, shabby waistcoat, and carried a file of papers. I had never seen a black man before, except in books.
He looked startled to see me too; he bowed a little warily. "Good day, Miss." He had a strange accent; like some of my great-uncle's American visitors, but different. "Would you be Lady Mansfield's ... maid?"
"No," I said a little sharply, "her great-niece."
His eyes bulged white at that. "I understand Lord Mansfield is not at home?"
"That's so."
"I sent him a letter, Miss, Ma'am, I mean,"—he stepped forward, as if to reduce the distance between us, and his face loosened into dark lines—"a letter of great importance, at least to me, and I was wondering if he had received it safely."
"I do not know," I said. His hand was pink underneath, just like mine; I wanted to touch it.
"His Lordship must receive many letters," the man said hoarsely, and swallowed, "but I very much hope—it is of the greatest urgency, not just to me but to thousands of others—that he read it."
"I will be sure to pass on your message on his Lordship's return," I said, too stiffly.
He was turning away when I asked for his name. "I beg your pardon. Somerset," he said, and repeated it doggedly; "my name is Somerset."
After the stranger was gone I stood still for a