Olivia Grenville could not remember when she had begun to despise her husband. It might even have been before they were married. Then the Cadver had belonged to her grandfather. Her parents had been killed in a bombing raid when they were in town to celebrate a wedding anniversary during her father’s leave, and she had moved automatically to the Cadver to be with her grandfather. She was fifteen and left her boarding school with some relief. The death of her parents scarcely touched her. She felt she hardly knew them. Her grandfather had a Victorian attitude to the education of women and thought she would be better off at home. He arranged for a music teacher to come from Appleworth to teach her the piano but otherwise she was left to her own devices. The lack of a formal education never bothered her, though there were areas where she had no knowledge at all. She had a sketchy recollection of history and English literature, but of geography and science she knew nothing. Her ignorance did not trouble her in the slightest and she made no attempt to teach herself. She convinced herself that if she did not know a fact it was not worth knowing. What was most important, she felt, was common sense and breeding and both those she had in abundance. She had a disdain for people with qualifications and degrees, as if they had spent their lives in self-indulgence.

Her grandfather had suggested Marcus Grenville as a prospective husband. He had been the chairman of the selection committee that had chosen the young man as candidate for the Conservative Party to fight a by-election after the war. In an area like Appleworth it was inevitable that he would become the constituency Member of Parliament. The old man brought Marcus Grenville home for dinner and afterwards asked in his mischievous way what she had made of him.

‘Well,’ he had said teasing. ‘Isn’t he a fine young man? Haven’t we chosen well?’

She had been non-committal. She had seen him for such a short time, she said. It was hard for her to tell.

‘You’ll have plenty of time to get to know him,’ her grandfather had said. He obviously enjoyed the matchmaking immensely. ‘ I’ve invited him to shoot next weekend. I’d say he’s prime minister material. Of course, he needs a wife.’

And so, almost like that, the thing had been arranged. Olivia had supposed that Marcus Grenville would do. The only passion in her life had been for the young music teacher who sat beside her, very close, on the piano stool and showed her how to position her hands, but her grandfather must have noticed the eagerness with which she waited for the weekly lessons because he had said suddenly one day that she was too old for such nonsense and she had never seen the young man again.