An excellent 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 collection of poems. When Maud and Roland discover a cache of love letters that appear to be from Ash they follow a trail of clues across England, echoing the journey of their bunch above a hundred years earlier in the day.