Maud Bailey, a brilliant English academic, is researching the life and work of poet Christabel La Motte. Roland Michell is an American scholar from London to study Randolph Henry Ash, now best-known for a selection of poetry dedicated to his wife. When Maud and Roland discover a cache of love letters that seem to be from Ash to La Motte, they follow a trail of clues across England, over a hundred years earlier echoing the traveling of their bunch.