She could have stepped back, but instead she lifted her face, and when his lips met hers, she closed her eyes. His kiss was soft, not quite chaste but the kind of kiss which could easily be passed off as belonging to a friend, if she chose. For a second, just a tiny second, she recalled the last time she had been kissed, so very differently, and then she closed her mind to it, and put her arm around Randolph’s neck.

He needed no encouraging, but he took no liberties, pressing her close but not too close, his kiss gentle but no longer soft. Though not particularly passionate either, she thought as it ended, vaguely puzzled by her own lack of response.

“I guess we need to get used to being more than friends,” Randolph said wryly, proving himself as attuned as ever to her thoughts. “Only I didn’t think you’d imagined me as anything other than a friend, until today.”

“I hadn’t. Had you?”

He shrugged. “For a while, but I didn’t want to risk wrecking our friendship. I hope I haven’t now.”

“No—oh, no.”

“I’m aware,” Randolph said, with a crooked smile, “that there was someone, once. It’s the one subject you’ve carefully avoided. I’m not asking you to tell me about it, but you’re over him, yes?”

Donald hugging her tightly. Donald saying goodbye, mounting the grey stallion, and riding off, and herself sinking to the ground, dropping her head into her hands. “Yes,” Margaret said, “it’s over.”

“Look, I don’t know where this might lead, but I hope—only you should know you’re not the only one who—I mean . . .”

She put a finger to his lips, shaking her head. “You’re thirty-one years old, Randolph. I don’t imagine you’ve lived like a monk—but, like you, I don’t need to know the details.”

“We think alike on this as everything.”

He slid his arm around her waist, pulling her close again. There was nothing platonic about this kiss, yet as she stood on the stoop watching him head in the direction of Bleecker Street, her pulses had already slowed, her quickened breath returned to normal.

“The question is, M.,” she asked herself as she put her key in the door, “would you do it again?” And, though there was considerable room for improvement, the answer was undoubtedly yes.

Charlotte, Duchess of Buccleuch, to Lady Margaret

Charlotte, Duchess of Buccleuch, to Lady Margaret

Montagu House, 10 October 1869

My dearest Margaret,

I have decided to break my silence on this, your twenty-third birthday. I enclose a small gift, a gold locket which you may recognise as one given to me by my own mother. It once contained miniature portraits of your grandparents. I have replaced these with photographs of myself and your sister Mary, and it comes with our love.