When cautious Emma Roberts leaves her lonely mother’s home in London to venture to Paris, she finds a reliable diversion from her studies of seventeenth-century garden design in a captivating new friend, Franoise Desnoyers. Soon, free-spirited Franoise welcomes Emma as a guest in her family’s beautiful mansion. However Emma is not too dazzled to ignore the tensions that exist between Franoise and her formidable mother, or between Mme. Desnoyers and her other guests. When a horrifying episode puts an end to Emma’s fascination, she begins to understand the compromises and challenges in love and life that she must come to accept.