In the late summer of 1938, Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Moncrieff, a decorated veteran of the Royal Navy and senior strategist of Britain's SIS, monitors the daily growth of Hitler's war machine, convinced that another European war is imminent. Frustrated with the Prime Minister and others in London who prefer to cast blind eyes on the military threat growing in Germany, Moncrieff purchased Highfield, an estate on Prince Edward Island, Canada, one year ago. If a German invasion threatens England and his family home, Clifton Manor, in Suffolk, Moncrieff plans to evacuate his wife and daughter to Highfield. Michael Moreland, the third-generation superintendent of Clifton Manor, has spent a year preparing Highfield for the arrival of the Moncrieff family. Moreland, secretly SIS trained under Moncrieff, has skills ranging from horsemanship to cryptography. As war looms and the Moncrieff family arrives in Canada, a romance between Michael and Susan Moncrieff rekindles. However, each holds a se