Stella Carlyle is a successful singer. Quirky, talented, abrasive, sexy, she has serial casual lovers until she falls in love with Robert - an equally successful eye surgeon. But Robert is married, and the strain of their long-standing affair is beginning to tell on both. American exfighter pilot Spencer McColl - 'overpaid, oversexed and over here' in World War II - had an affair with an English widow. But it was her daughter he really loved, and on a brief return visit to commemorate the war veterans, their one-night stand leads to a daughter - Stella - whom Spencer never knows. Harry Latimer, a captain in the Hussars, is posted to the Crimea and leaving behind the family home in Wiltshire, and an undeclared passion for his widowed sister-in-law. Their contrasting experiences - Harry amid the squalor and brutality of war, Rachel in the tranquil Wiltshire landscape - make a poignant third strand to the narrative.