I thought about this. Should I continue blundering, and making Edgar miserable, and shaming my LGBTQ peers? Would I relish becoming an even more public target for the Internet’s scorn? I’d met a wonderful person, but Edgar was far more complicated than that. He was a leader and a grandson and, at times, a nervous breakdown in progress. Could I handle that? Was I strong enough? But something had changed with this conversation; there’d been a shift in the balance of our relationship. Edgar was slumped on his chair, steeling himself for another scandal and another bad choice and another goodbye. He needed me.

“No, I don’t want to leave,” I said. “Unless you’d like to have me deported. Or unless your grandmother creeps into my room with a dagger. But I’m not going anywhere, and do you know why?”

Edgar looked at me with a yearning hopelessness, as if he was drowning and I was in a lifeboat a few feet away, checking my phone.

“Here’s why.”

I walked over and kissed him.

“You are so not playing fair,” he said.

“I know.”

And this time he kissed me.

CHAPTER 19

The next day Edgar and I had lunch with a gaggle of his friends, which included schoolmates from Oxford, three titled cousins, a video artist and a poet. There was an unspoken physical code: if the group thought a stranger was hovering to sneak a photo, they’d gracefully block the angle. They didn’t interrogate me, but I could tell I was on probation. They were raucous and teasing and they had something in common with my New York posse—a protectiveness. Adam and Louise and I could say anything to one another, the funnier and more slashing the better. But if anyone outside our circle made even the mildest snide remark, we closed ranks. I was glad Edgar had friends like that. I just wished he had an Abby, although she was already on the case.

During the afternoon, Edgar took me to the National Portrait Gallery, the House of Lords and Westminster Abbey. At each stop, a private viewing had been arranged, as if Edgar and I either owned these buildings or were considering a summer rental. It was an amazingly personal way to visit landmarks, but it also felt closed in, as if we were touring a communist country and being restricted to government-approved exhibitions.

“Think of it this way,” Edgar said. “Imagine we’re checking out the alarm system before breaking in and stealing a Rembrandt. And no one would ever suspect me.”

“Everyone would blame me!” I told him.

“So it’s a perfect crime.”