Charlotte was closing on eighteen. Tomorrow would be her birthday when she would be eighteen. That day was mere minutes away. Charlotte was going to bed rather late. She had stayed up watching television. She stood, as she had so often stood since she was small, in front of the portrait, 'her picture', as she liked to think of it, and gazed at the person portrayed in oils by the artist so many years ago. It hung on the wall of her bedroom, overlooking her bed, in her aunt's house. She always, as far back as she could remember, came to her aunt's house in the country around her birthday in August.
It was a week-long visit her parents always made in the summer, and she loved the visit and looked forward to the annual journey. She was very fond of her aunt and her house. And who would not be? A grand Elizabethan mansion in Shropshire set in its own pretty grounds by a river. Places to walk, places to hide, places to paint, places for everything.
The portrait had not always hung in her room. It seemed to have been hung in many rooms in the house as if it had a will of its own, as if the lady in the picture decided where it would be hanging next. She first remembered it in the garden room, a room she had played in when little and had her toys. The picture had looked down on her from way up on the wall but she had noticed it, high above her then diminutive figure, a pretty lady with tall fair hair in a blue dress. Another year and she had seen it in the dining room placed on the wall opposite where she sat. When she saw it there, she had smiled, her white baby teeth shining in recognition of the lady in the blue dress.
When she was twelve the portrait had moved and had watched her comings and goings from the hall as she ran out to play. She had been pleased to see her picture again and made a point of waving to the blue lady every time she ran out or ran in all excited and dirty. She had asked her uncle about the portrait and why it was in different rooms. Her uncle had looked momentarily puzzled and asked which picture Charlotte was talking about and said her aunt sometimes liked to change things. He did not know much about the painting, the house had been in his wife's family rather than his own. Charlotte had asked her aunt about it but aunt had smiled and asked her whether she liked the painting? It was, she had explained, a portrait of a former mistress of the house.
It was two years later when it had appeared in her bedroom and, at that point, seemed to have ended its perambulations. Charlotte had been delighted to see her old friend in her room right at the end of her bed. She took more notice of the detail of the picture now. The lady was in a very old-fashioned blue dress of silk with a plunging neckline showing a great deal of cleavage. A daring amount of cleavage, thought Charlotte, any lower cut and you would have seen, well, what should be hidden. Her golden hair was mounded up high above her head. The lady was pretty, with a wide mouth showing just the hint of a smile, a knowing smile you might have called it, she had high cheekbones displayed with rouge and her blue eyes seemed to be looking at you - or at least that was how Charlotte saw the picture. In the background of the portrait was her aunt's house with its lawns and terraces sweeping down to the river and lake. You could see the island on the lake.
Lady Arabella Struthers was the subject, her aunt had told her on another visit. Charlotte had been sitting in her bedroom looking at the portrait when her aunt had come in to wish her a good night. It was good to have a name to go with the picture. Charlotte had then tried to find out about Lady Arabella. It seemed she had been quite a lady, at the hub of society in Shropshire in her time; her balls were eagerly anticipated and talked about for weeks afterwards. She was gifted and popular, but despite a succession of suitors she had never married. She seemed content to be the lady of the manor, centre of local society and to grow old gracefully, attended by various young women who came to be her companions.
Charlotte stood in front of the portrait. She had always loved that blue dress; she would love to have tried it on; indeed, to have one just like it. Charlotte was dark haired, but she did not think that would matter and it would suit her just as much as it did Lady Arabella. She began to undress, and her thoughts turned to her birthday party on the morrow. She glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was already midnight -- it was the morrow. Her birthday. Charlotte at eighteen! A coming of age.
Her blouse undone, she dropped it on a chair and reached behind her to undo the bra strap and release her breasts from their confinement. She sighed and put her hands over her breasts, moulding them in her hands. They were not much to look at, not much to feel, not like Lady Arabella's ample bosom. Charlotte's breasts would not fill the dress and, even forced upwards by the dress to show her cleavage to best advantage, would not put on much of a show. Charlotte thought about the incongruity of a fashion that so emphasised a woman's breasts, endeavouring to reveal as much cleavage as possible without actually showing the nipples. Perhaps, she thought, the more daring ladies did, as they moved, occasionally reveal the edge of a nipple, the brownness of an areole slipping into view. That would have excited the gentlemen.
She was disappointed in her breasts. They hardly filled her hands. With that thought her hands dropped to her waist, leaving her breasts, and she undid her jeans pulling them and her pants down her legs. She picked them from the floor and shook them out before folding them and placing them on the top of her blouse and bra. Charlotte turned, naked, to the portrait and pouted, perhaps Lady Arabella only had small breasts at her age. She wondered what she had been like, the lady in her picture, why had she not married? Had a Mr. Darcy, a Mr. Right, never come along? Had he indeed come along but been lost at sea on some great adventure; had he gone off with another woman and broken her heart or as, alas, happened in those days, had just died? Absently Charlotte's hand stroked down her tummy and across her springing black curls. She yawned, putting her hand to her mouth even though no one was there to see her.
"I do wish I had a dress like that, just to try on," she said aloud and turned away, her pretty dimpled pink bottom now facing the portrait and walked over to her bed turning off the electric light. It was a hot night; she decided not to put her nightie on and instead walked over to the window and opened another light. The windows were old, Elizabethan, and had small diamond panes of glass set in lead. Charlotte looked out across the lawns in the moonlight. It was very still.
Had someone been out on the lawn that person might well have seen naked Charlotte there at her window, leaning out, white breasts resting on the sill. A pretty sight. Old houses so photogenic. The more so with a pretty and naked girl there in the picture.
Charlotte got onto her bed, the bed that had always been in the room, an old double bed of dark polished oak, The night was hot, so she did not pull the covers or even a sheet up over herself. She turned out her bedside light, not bothering to read, and lay bathed in the moonlight that poured in through the window. It illuminated the portrait opposite, but the moonlight was not enough to give it any colour and it now seemed to be just in shades of black and white, her own body too, stretched out on the bed was in monochrome, white but for her dark bush and the tips of her nipples. She brushed her right nipple; did she feel like playing or should she sleep? She closed her eyes and thought about sex, what it would be like to have a man on top of her, a fine, handsome and tall man -- a Mr Darcy, indeed - seeking entrance. Her interest in sex stirred but not quite enough and before her fingers could begin their play she drifted into sleep.
The grandfather clock in the hall struck midnight. It was a little late. But it was old and not as accurate as Charlotte's digital wristwatch. It had kept the house's time for a very long while. Back to Lady Struthers time, if not before. It had no doubt been mended many times. It did perhaps need the present attention of a horologist.
Charlotte awoke with the feeling she was no longer alone, a soft light shone in the room not just moonlight but a yellow light, the light of candles. Puzzled but not worried, she turned to her right to see a figure seated in the armchair in the far corner of the room, moreover a figure she recognised, a figure anachronistically dressed in a flowing blue silk dress with fair hair piled high on her head: the lady from the picture.
"My warmest congratulations, Charlotte m'dear, on your eighteenth birthday," said the lady in an accent that seemed Shropshire, yet somehow different.
"I... well... thank you," said Charlotte quite astonished at the visitor. Was she dreaming? "Who... who are you? Why are you here -- in my room?"
"Why, I am Lady Arabella Struthers. Surely you knew that?" The lady seemed almost affronted at the suggestion Charlotte might not be aware of her and her name.
"But, but how?"
"Oh nothing, nothing you need to bother your pretty young head with one iota. I have been watching you, my dear Charlotte, watching since you were small and, my word, what a fine, delightful girl you have grown into. Stand up now from your bed, be smartish, and let me look at you."
The lady was accustomed to command and Charlotte, without thinking, got out of bed. As she did so she remembered her nakedness and her hands flew to cover her breasts and sex.
"You needn't be so modest with me girl. Why, are we not two women together? Though any man would be pleased to see such charms. Now stand straight, arms to your sides and turn slowly."
