When Claudia and Ben first meet on the banks of the Seine, the sexual frisson between them is powerful, instantaneous - and mutual. But Claudia quickly begins to suspect that Ben is less interested in her than in her honorary godfather Hugh, the enigmatic Englishman who had been her father's best friend.

Then Claudia's apartment is ransacked, and she herself threatened by a pair of sinister thugs. As she flees in terror to Hugh's exquisite villa on the beautiful Cap d'Antibes, Claudia is followed by Ben - and one of her attackers.

The solution to the puzzle lies in the dark days of World War Two, when Edward, exiled in the South of France, with Wallis Simpson, plots deadly treason against his native land. As Claudia struggles to understand the complexities of the past, she must also grapple with her own turbulent feelings: lover or deadly enemy, Ben has caught tight hold of her heart.