A French musket ball to the leg takes Captain Hugh Fanshawe from the battlefield and leaves him enduring long, quiet days compiling paperwork at Horse Guards headquarters. He knows his lameness makes him the object of pity and distaste at the stifling social engagements he dutifully escorts his mother and sister to, but everything in his orderly life changes when Colonel Theo Lindsay arrives.
Theo is everything Hugh is not. He's a man of physical perfection and an enjoyable companion, and their friendship deepens into love. But when the army suspects there's a French spy at Horse Guards, Hugh discovers nothing is as it seems, and the paper he shuffles daily could save his lover's life.