The book starts with the prologue in October 1859, and we are introduced to Lucy Harvington, who is in the Crimea, worried about her husband Charlie, not knowing if he will return safe and sound. Lucy admits that this life is very different to the comforts she was used to back in England.
The book then takes us back in time. It is January 1859, and Lucy meets Charlie when she is visiting some acquaintances, and from the first they hit it off. Some weeks later during breakfast with her father and her older sister, Dorothea, Lucy announces that Charlie is going to come and see her father. Dorothea is suspicious and warns her against doing anything rash like getting engaged. Lucy says that they are not going to bother with engagements; they will get married and go to the Crimea because they are in love and can't live without each other. Dorothea and Lucy's father shows signs of mental instability. Dorothea thinks that Lucy is too young and warns her father before she goes out to work in the hospital she is in as a volunteer. When she returns, she is dismayed to discover that her father has given Charlie his permission to marry Lucy.
Dorothea feels she needs to stop the wedding or at least, delay it until after the war. First, she goes to see a good friend, William Woodland, a barrister, who agrees to write to Major Dodds about Lucy being too young to go with Charlie to Crimea. Dorothea writes to Charlie's family, asking them to help her delay the wedding. When Charlie's father writes back, he says that they have washed their hands of Charlie and she should stop Lucy from marrying him because he is nothing but a scoundrel. With the letter Dorothea talks to Lucy, who becomes upset. She claims that Charlie's family hates him for some misunderstanding, and she hates her sister for meddling. That day later when Dorothea returns, she finds her sister gone, and she has left a letter telling her that she is going with Charlie and hates her. Dorothea feels she has made a mistake.
Woodland talks to Dorothea, and he says that he wrote to Major Dodds, but the short letter that he got was a refusal to his request and an endorsement of Charlie. Dorothea feels that she has lsot Lucy, and shortly afterwards she gets a note, telling her that Lucy and Charlie are now husband and wife.
This is a very interesting start. Even though Lucy appears in the prologue, I have the hunch that the real focus of the novel is going to be Dorothea.
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