David Eliot's future seemed well and truly settled: on the personal front, with his engagement to Marly, on the professional front, as an architect in the employ of Sir Bertram Tranter, Marly's incredibly rich and powerful father. He had promised his daughter a strip of Portuguese coast for a wedding present. When matters did not move with the speed he liked, David was packed off to finalise them. Marly went too on this mission which created havoc in all the well-laid plans. Suddenly for David, life began to open out again, to look uncertain, exciting, full of perplexing but delightful possibilities.