Three novellas, each telling a tale of love in troubled seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe.
Friedrich Schelling, a philosopher lecturing in Germany's famed Jena University and a leading proponent of the new Romantic movement, has fallen for his friend's wife. As Europe's cities fall to Napoleon's army, and a tragic death shatters Jena, Schelling battles his colleagues for Europe's intellectual future while wondering if he has lost his love before he has even won her.
Margaret Lucas escapes the English Civil War by travelling to France in Queen Henrietta's entourage. There her heart is captured by an exiled royalist soldier, William Cavendish. Soon married, as Margaret Cavendish she now has the freedom to embrace her other great passions: women's equality, the new sciences, poetry, philosophy, high couture, and completing her feminist science fiction novel.
Rene Descartes is nearing the end of his life. He has escaped his French detractors by accepting the position of philosopher-in-residence with Sweden's remarkable, foul-mouthed Queen Christina. But she reminds him of his long-deceased daughter, and he is all too aware sceptical courtiers are plotting for him to join her.
Three true-life tales from an era when compelling personalities introduced ideas now integral to the modern world, each written with polished verve, wry humour, and lit within by incandescent longing.