Secret agent Augustus Whittlesby has spent a decade undercover in France, posing as a terrible poet. The French spies can't bear to read his work closely enough to recognise the information drowned in a sea of verbiage. Emma Delagardie is a thorn in Augustus' side. An old school friend of Napoleon's stepdaughter, she came to France, eloped with a Frenchman and rattles around the salons of Paris. Now widowed, she holds a weekly salon where she critiques Augustus' poems. But when he hears of a secret invasion plan at Emma's party Augustus must try and get closer to her...