“And how do you intend on exploiting your present luck, sir?” I asked.

“Like this,” he said, and then astounded me by bringing his lips to mine, gently but with determination.

It was a moment of possible fateful decision. Kiss him back, instantly retreat, or just stand there like one of my childish friends, shocked and nothing else.

I had made my decision months, maybe years, ago. There was no exploration more exciting than my own sexuality. Yes, I wanted boyfriends, but I wanted them to be grown men, and here, with his hands on my shoulders and his lips on mine, was my first real man, perhaps the first of many. Maybe it was evil for me to think it, but I believed that a woman could have more than one sexual partner, too. I was no Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Nothing was as boring to me as politics and this whole debate about a woman’s right to vote. No, the equality I sought was in the bedroom.

I kissed him back as strongly and as passionately as he was kissing me, perhaps surprising him. He did look speechless and then smiled.

“For a moment there, I thought I might have been lifted to the stars.”

“Who says you were not?” I asked.

How he roared at that.

When he stopped laughing, he looked at me more seriously. He could see that I had self-confidence and wasn’t afraid of being touched, being kissed, but perhaps he also saw that there was something about me that did not support simple promiscuity. Maybe I was convincing myself or maybe being too hopeful, but he looked like he was quite smitten with me, and I so much wanted him to be. My first real test in the sophisticated social world, I thought, and I was doing so well he’d never know how innocent I really was.

I glanced back at the mansion’s front entrance, anticipating my mother shooting out from the doorway like a cannonball and ruining all this with a few sharp phrases, some directed at him.

“Perhaps we should return,” I said. “My parents might grow frantic.”

“Oh, then, perhaps we should. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of them now.” He took my hand and started back.

“You’ll have to be careful, then, when and if you meet my mother.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“She’s old-fashioned, too formal. That’s my kindest way of putting it.”

“Not necessarily a fault,” he said.

“In her case, it is. She was born old-fashioned. My father says she threatened the doctor who slapped her rear when she was born. He calls me ‘her handful.’ ”

He laughed so hard that he had to pause a moment. “Something tells me you are more than a mere handful.”

“I should hope so,” I said.

We continued to the steps.

“Do you ever get to Charlottesville?” he asked.

“On occasion. I have a great-aunt there, Nettie Lloyd. She’s a widow who lost both her sons in the war.”