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discipline. Her Tutor was in complete agreement with her—Frederica Delacroix had been born to paint. She was one of those students Tutors lived for—an obvious, stunning talent.
    Frederica packed a small overnight case, and as it was a fine day, she decided to walk to the train station. Her home was a small village in Gloucestershire on the edge of the Cotswolds, and it was prime landscape-painting country. The train was on time and the journey was relatively short. When she alighted, carrying her case with careless ease, it was barely one o’clock.
    As she walked up a narrow lane frothing with cow parsley, she noticed with pleasure that the swallows had arrived. Rainbow House, the Delacroix family home for centuries, was on the very outskirts of Cross Keys, and was a sturdy, square, no-nonsense country gentleman’s residence; her heart lifted when she turned the last bend in the narrow country lane and saw it. Her mother, a keen gardener, kept the square, walled garden in immaculate, colourful, condition and her solicitor father, was the last in a long line of Delacroixs.
    One day, she knew, she would marry and have a family of her own. So far, though, she hadn’t even had a lover. Still, there was plenty of time for all that.
    She walked through the gate that lead to the west side of the house, glancing up at the dormer windows on the second floor as she did so. She coveted that corner room—a lot of windows, a lot of natural light, as it got both morning and afternoon sunlight. It would make a perfect artist’s studio. Now that her father was finally convinced she was going to be a painter, it wouldn’t take much to persuade him to convert the room for her.
    â€˜Frederica! Darling! I didn’t know you were coming home for the weekend!’ The voice came from a big clump of beautifully scented white peonies. Closer inspection revealed Donna Delacroix, Frederica’s mother, on her hands and knees, pulling up some recalcitrant groundsel.
    â€˜I did tell you,’ Frederica said mildly with a fond smile. Her mother’s memory had nothing on a sieve!
    â€˜Oh, yes, I suppose you did,’ Donna stood and hugged her daughter. ‘Do you want some lunch?’
    â€˜Hmm, yes please,’ Frederica said, following her mother into the cool, terracotta-tiled farmhouse kitchen. She ran up to her room to unpack and wash, and when she came back down, the kettle was boiling merrily.
    Donna was a small, neat, utterly English country lady, who worked in a charity shop two days a week, was a member of her local Women’s Institute and took pride in her home and garden—opening both to the public in the summer, to raise money for charity.
    Her mother rushed off after lunch to join one of her friends in a baking marathon for the forthcoming village fête, so Frederica had the whole afternoon to herself, spending some of it in the small but well-stocked library, and the rest of it walking in the bluebell woods at the furthest boundary of her father’s small plot of land. When she returned, the church clock was just striking five. Surprisingly, her father’s car was already parked in the driveway.
    James Delacroix was sitting in his favourite chair, smoking his pipe when Frederica whirled in to his study.
    â€˜Freddy!’ He regarded his only child with affection, expecting, and receiving, an embrace and a kiss on the cheek.
    â€˜Dad.’ Frederica stood back, her head cocked to one side. ‘You’re home early.’
    James coughed. ‘Er . . . yes. Your mother is out, isn’t she?’ Frederica suspected that he already knew the answer. She smiled. ‘Yes, she is.’
    James grunted, looked at his pipe, looked at his daughter, coughed again, and stuck the pipe in his mouth. ‘How’s school?’ he mumbled around it.
    He always insisted on referring to her studies at Oxford as ‘being at school’. He’d never really approved