Steve Cartney wrote histirical nove

Steve Cartney wrote histirical novels. Not, he was quick to explain, over colorful love stories of the kind that made so much money for so many women writers, but novels set, and correctly set, in historical periods. Whatever differrence he saw in his own books, his readers did not seem to notice it, and his readers were nearly all women. He had studied at university, bits he had not been a particular good student, and he had never afterwards let any academic knowledge he had gained interfere with his writing.
Helen his wife, who did not have a very high opinion of her husband's ability as a novelist, had been careful to say when she married him that she was not historically minded. Steve had accepted this, perhaps even welcomed it, and had not expected her to read all his books, still less to talk to him about them. He had not married her for that. She had therefore, never been in danger of revealing her view by acident. All the same, she knew that she had to be careful, especially when relaxing at parties, in case she gave away what she really thought about Steve's writing. She found it was easier to deal with the women because, although they were all very attracted to Steve, they mostly saw that they could not compete with Helen in attractiveness, so she could easily be nice to them. Up till now she had not let these problem worry her, but she was beginning to think that the situation might not always be without it difficulties.
Above all, Helen was doubtful whether her relationship with Steve could worl at all in the village of Stratton, to which they hay fust moved. It was Steve who wanted to move to the country, and he had been glad of thr change, in principle, whatever doubts she was now having about Stratton as a choice. But she wondered whether Steve would not, before very long , want to live in London again, and what she would do is he did. The Strettom house was not a weeken cottage. They had moved into it and given up the London flat altogether, partly at least, she suspected, because that was Steve's idea of what a successful author ought to do. However, she thought he was no going to feel like a successful author half as much in Stretton as he had in London. On the other hand, she supposed he might just start dashing up to london for the day to see his agent or have lunch with his puplisher, leaving her behind in Stretton, and she thought on the whole she would like that.
Their house, when properly furnished, was going to be lovely, and, in limited doses, she could enjoy the heavy peace of the place much more on her own than with Steve behaving live a succesful author in his study upstairs.
The move had been made very quickly. Steve had money an when he wanted anything, he got it fast. It was, of course, true that the things he wanted, were always things he was capable of getting. Like many self-centered men, he had an exact awareness of his own limitations