After surviving the massacre of his unit during the long retreat to Dunkirk in the spring of 1940, a young British officer finds sanctuary from the Germans and escape from his responsibilities by assuming the identity of a French teacher, a female teacher. The same physical attributes that had been a handicap to Ian Wylie while serving King and Country allow him to carry out this subterfuge with shocking ease. This new life is not without its hazards as Ian, now living as Diane Lambert, is drawn back into a war he barely escaped when a charismatic Resistance leader enlist Diane's assistance in gathering intelligence on German activities. The Germans are not the only danger Diane faces, as the naïveté of her students threaten to compromise their efforts. Not even the Allied invasion in 1944 frees Diane from the hazards of war as the former officer must call upon long dormant skills to protect both the girls he had come to cherish and an identity better fit than the one he left behind.