Elizabeth Beauchamp, a young bride to a lieutenant in the Seventeenth Lancers, and Edward Seagrave, a corporal in the Twelfth Regiment of Lancers, were childhood friends. In the backdrop of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, their separate lives are played out in ignorance of each other until very many years later when a chance encounter rekindles old emotions. However, adult expectations are far different to those of adolescents. Circumstances have conspired to hinder any hopes of intimacy between a lady of breeding and a farmer's son, even if he has risen through the ranks to become an officer of some worth.