Louise and Rebecca, good friends since their BBC days in Belfast, work for a film company and are scouring the south of England for a suitable location to shoot a movie about Elizabeth I. As they stumble across Wooldene House, they meet Diana and Henry, who own the property. Diana, widowed, feels her life is slowly crumbling along with the house, and yearns for new romance. Diana spends her time looking after their aunt Lucy who, as she senses time is running out, begins the share the startling secrets in her past. And Henry, retired from the Army after a stint in Northern Ireland, is increasingly drawn to Louise — but their shared history, which places them on opposite sides of the troubles — threatens them both...

HONOR BRADY falls in love with wine merchant Hugo Lambert and moves to Astignac, a village in the French wine region Entre Deux Mers. Hugo sells rare wines to connossieurs; wines with a story; wines hidden during the war; wines rescued from the Winter Palace in St Petersburg... MELANIE MILLER, an American student, discovers that the grandfather who raised her, fathered a child in Astignac during the war. She sets out to find the relatives she never knew she had. IVOR KITCHOFF, an American of Russian descent, wants to own one of the precious Romanoff bottles. But other, less salubrious Russians, are equally interested... All of these characters have their own reasons for coming to Astignac. But they share one thing in common: the need to know what is real and what is false. In love as well as wine.