Alex Faversham, growing up in the early years of the twentieth century, dreams of rebellion and longs to break away from her comfortable background. A chance visit from the beautiful black sheep of the family, her Aunt Alicia, who is now married to an Austrian Count, fires Alex's determination to escape and she secretly arranges a job as paid companion to a woman who plans to travel to Italy. At the age of nineteen Alex sets out to find the exciting destiny she yearns for. Italy is enchanting, but as she watches the dancers in hotel ballrooms she feels something missing from her life; when her employer decides to return home, Alex sets out for Vienna - home of the waltz. The heady glitter of imperial Vienna in the years before the First World War is as alluring as Alex had dreamed - the city seemingly existing in an everlasting round of balls and parties. Here she finds romance with Karl von Winckler, a hussar in the Emperor's guard; but like the Habsburg Empire their love cannot last. Alex travels to St Petersburg with her aunt, returning to Vienna in 1914 on the eve of war, and not until peace has come does Alex at last go home to England. But when she eventually marries, far more globetrotting awaits her...