BRITAIN AND FRANCE are locked in war, Napoleon Bonaparte has pushed his Empire to the furthest corners of Europe, but in the small village of Bramleigh, deep in the West Country of England, a young aristocrat, Lord Richard Constable, has become engaged to a penniless French emigre, Elise Delaroche. Their happy idyll is torn apart by family ambition and hidden vice, and the two lovers pursue separate lives -- one as a fashionable society husband, the other as a British spy. Seven years later, on June 18, 1815, the Battle of Waterloo powerfully reconfigures all Europe, simultaneously revealing old secrets, settling old scores, and bringing to life a new order. An historical novel of unparalleled sweep, following the fortunes of war, espionage, passion and crime to their bloody conclusion on the Waterloo battlefield."