Young widow Rose Charteris had her heart broken by Tom Hawwkesleigh five years earlier when she was still a girl.  Now more experienced, she travels with her Egyptologist uncle, aunt and cousin, making a living with her sketches.  When things go wrong and the party end up as guests of a pasha in Constantinople, she comes up against Tom once again.  He is now a secret agent working with the sultan over top-secret plans to reform the Turkish army, and needs a skilled artist to draw the new uniforms.  Unable to do this himself, he must find somebody who can and that seems to be Rose.

I invariably enjoy novels that show life in an unfamiliar place and time, and Constantinople in 1804 is not a setting I have come across before.  Realistically, we only see what Rose and her party sees but it still sets the scene admirably, as does the theme of the craze for Egyptian finds and the facts about Turkey.  The secret work Rose and Tom undertake adds to the plot, as does the description of a London season.  All in all, there is a lot in this novel as well as a romance about two people learning to love one another after a false start.