Margaret pressed a kiss to the baby’s brow, wiping a tear hurriedly from her cheek before it could damage the print. She had sent Walter a jack-in-the-box, and for Cecil and Margaret, she had chosen music boxes. In the trunk, which would accompany Marion across the Atlantic, there was a music box for Mama, too, and a copy of Little Women for Mary. It was signed by the author, whom Margaret had met at one of Mary Louise’s salons. She had picked up the new edition of Mary Louise’s own book, A History of the City of New York, in Appleton’s, thinking that her father might enjoy it, forgetting just long enough for it to hurt when she remembered that he would not welcome any gift from her. Replacing the book on the shelf, telling herself he didn’t deserve it anyway, had proven much more difficult that it ought to have. She didn’t love him, but neither could she completely cease to care, no matter how badly he treated her.

With a wistful sigh, Margaret carefully set down the photograph of Victoria’s family and began to pack the last of her gifts into the trunk. There was a spangled silk scarf for Julia in her favourite cornflower blue and a pair of rather risqué black silk stockings. Another copy of Little Women was destined for Breda, and there were gifts for all her brothers and sisters and her mother, too. Jacob’s ladders; jack-in-the-boxes; and a small mountain of candy including peppermint sticks, liquorice whips, Whitman’s sugar plums, Necco Wafers, and peanut candy were earmarked for the Enniskerry schoolchildren. The trunk was so full she had to sit on the lid to force it shut.

It was snowing outside, a fresh, soft fall on top of the crisp frozen blanket already covering Washington Square. Margaret traced the path of the snowflakes as they landed gently on the windowpane before they melted. Was it only three years ago when she had stood in the orangery at Dalkeith doing the same thing? Three years, since she tried so desperately hard to stifle her feelings and do what was expected of her. Her first exile, and her first Christmas apart from her family. Would she ever share another Christmas with them? It seemed unlikely.