When Anne Jewell, a teacher at Miss Martin's School for Girls, met Sydnam Butler, steward of the Duke of Bewcastle, one summer in Wales, it was a meeting of two lonely, wounded souls. Anne is a single mother forced to live in a strict Regency society, and Sidnam is horribly crippled by torture while spying for the British against Bonaparte's forces. A friendship develops between them, and then something more, but neither of them considers themselves attractive to each other, so at the end of the summer they go their separate ways. Only an unforeseen turn of fate reconciles them again and puts them on the path of mutual healing and love.