A marriage of convenience and a dashing Army major for a husband, the year is 1808 and when sixteen-year-old Dorinda Fane sails with her handsome aide-de-camp for French-held Portugal her dreams of happiness with this cousin whom she has loved since childhood have already been shattered on their wedding night. Torn between Kit's indifference, his increasing jealousy of the shy Scots hussar captain who loves her, and his hurtful infidelity with the tempestuous gypsy girl who becomes his mistress, Dindie's heartache finds a kindred spirit in their maligned and ill-fated commander-in-chief, Sir John Moore. But unexpected events transform the buoyant march of the tiny British expeditionary force into Spain. As the scarlet columns toil rebelliously upwards through hissing sleet into pitiless mountains, the 250-mile life-or-death retreat to the coast of Corunna is bedevilled by typhus, starvation and an unstemmable orgy of plundering and drunkeness. With Napoleon's cavalry at their heels, the personal tragedy of Dindie's marriage to Kit reaches its own shaming, horror-filled climax.