A sumptuous historical novel set in pre-Revolutionary Russia and Paris Marguerite Laurent is summoned to the Imperial Court of Empress Elizabeth to work as the Empress's personal embroiderer. The journey is long and dangerous, but Marguerite makes friendships that will sustain her most particularly with a handsome Englishman, Tom Harwell, a landscape gardener whose task is to create beautiful gardens for the Empress, and with an art dealer, Simon de Villiers . . .