The engagement in 1814 of Julia to Richard Beaumont brings Julia's cousin Eliza into contact with Richard's brother Francis, newly returned from the Peninsular War, and his friend Pelham Howell. In the first of these acquaintances Eliza meets a spirit as fierce as her own, in the second a charm and devotion she never thought to receive. It is the loyalty the two men feel for each other that must resolve the ensuing triangle. And so the transformation of a wilful child into a loving woman takes place. But the complete world that Eliza creates around her marriage is shattered by the news of Napoleon's escape from Elba and the call to arms that will take her to her moment of truth on the field of Waterloo.