“When this war is over, I will come back. And you will love me.”

4 June, 1940. The last day of the Dunkirk evacuation. On one side of the English Channel, Elizabeth Bennet looks to the horizon, counting the boats returning from France, wondering if it is possible to learn to love a man in his absence. Across the narrow stretch of sea, two exhausted men stand, shoulder-deep in the water, waiting for one more boat to come and take them home.

On the eve of the Second World War, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy meet in Kent, in a small coastal town called Meryton. He thinks she is tolerable at best, she thinks he is a pompous ass. Will the terror sweeping across Europe tear them apart or pull them closer together? Can Darcy keep the promise he made her before he left?