Lieutenant-colonel Lucius Calbourne, is secluding in a small village in Suffolk, England, looking after his uncles windmill while recovering from wounds received whilst on a reconnaissance mission into France, during 1914. A freak accident pitches him not only into a muddy ditch but into the centre of the local vicar the Rev Jebusa Tilton's family, who Lucius discovers is the estranged son of the Marquis of Tyne. During his stay at the vicarage recovering from his accident, Lucius develops a fondness for 'The Vicar's' eldest daughter Clemance, who becomes embroiled in a spying mission to Belgium, and the battle of Quatre Bras during Napoleons advance on Brussels in 1915, after which Clemmie goes missing, and Lucius turns out to be someone she does not expect him to be.