A brilliant English academic, maud Bailey, is currently researching the life and work of poet Christabel La Motte. Roland Michell is an American scholar in London to study Randolph Henry Ash, now best-known for a selection of poetry. When Maud and Roland discover a cache of love letters that appear to be from Ash into La Motte, they follow a trail of clues across England, above a hundred years earlier in the day echoing the journey of their couple.