The Civil Prisoners

After the Peace of Amiens, Napoleon retaliated against England's renewal of war by holding as prisoners all English civilians in France at the time. So it is in a foreign city, Verdun, and against the uneasy atmosphere of a country at war that British families, many of them already related or acquainted with each other, some unexpectedly brought together again after long absences, are forced into making the best of their peculiar situation. At the centre of this unusual story, the developing love between Cary Vyner and Emily, Lady Royden, with its innocence and temptations, its doubts and reassurances, contrasts sharply with the duplicity and worldly aspirations of Cary's Warstowe relatives, intent upon securing the Vyner inheritance for their own son.