Drawing on many parallels from the authors life for the historical tale, Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott was pictured in a Victorian-style floor-length outfit, complete with high-necked blouse, jacket and gloves, sitting on a stone bench gazing at a compass she held out in front of her, the Lady – although her family, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, were close friends with the Queen and the Prince Consort, the Duke's ex-wife and the Queen's former in-law – struggled to come to terms with the rigorous disciplines of royal life after marrying, and that their second daughter, Margaret, was a redhead with a birthday "within a few days" of her own.

Beginning when she discovered romance, her heroine's 'rebellious' red hair is much more of a feature, that depicts her as a woman who is initially the toast of London in the Duchess' historical novel, than sex.

While initially submitting to the strictures of high society and the tribulations of the marriage market, she endures a pasting from the press before emerging triumphant, throwing off the weight of expectations to become her true self.

Proud to bring her personal brand to the world, sweeps the reader from the drawing rooms of Victoria's court and the grand country houses of Scotland and Ireland, where she was cast out from the royals amid her scandal, and fell deeply into debt to the slums of London, and then the mercantile bustle of 1870s New York.

The novel veers around somewhat in tone, from archaic – Margaret's priest informs her that "you cannot have imagined I would have kissed you in such a manner unless my intentions were honourable" and one admirer opines: "She was very naive but, by heavens, she had real spirit, too, no one could doubt that."

It wears its research lightly, with intriguing forays into topics such as Victorian bathing dresses, and the Queen's predilection to "pour her tea from one cup to another until it was adequately cooled".