Summer, 1943. The King and Queen choose to send their youngest daughter, Princess Charlotte, to live with a noble family in the country. Despite her headstrong nature, the princess's fragile health poses far too great a risk for her to remain in war-torn London. She arrives in Yorkshire under an alias; only her guardians know her true identity. Charlotte befriends a young evacuee, trains with her cherished horse - and falls deeply in love with her...

1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring-she's happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she'd long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher-to help evacuate Britain's children overseas. 1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed...

Edie Burchill receives a letter that has lain for 50 years in a forgotten postal bag, and begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masked an old secret. She sets out to find the answers by tracking the letter back to its source, starting with the return address: Milderhurst Castle, Kent, where her mother had been taken as a child, during the London evacuations of World War II.