This novel takes forward the story of the young American Charles George MacPherson and his friends Thomas and Mary Graham. After the Gordon Riots in London Charles travels with his friends to Portugal and Spain before returning to America, where he finds wealth and unexpected, but fleeting, happiness. He is then summoned to France where Mary Graham is seriously ill. After her death the two friends are caught up in the horrors of the French revolutionary Terror and Thomas decides to take a hand in the war by raising his own regiment. Thomas and Charles then take part in Moore's terrible retreat to Corunna over the high Spanish mountains in mid-winter. Eventually overcoming official opposition, Thomas at last achieves a permanent commission and at Barossa becomes a hero in his own right. He is appointed second-in-command to Wellington, is awarded a knighthood and then a peerage, taking the title of Lord Lynedoch, after the home which he and Mary planned together but in which they never lived.