18th century. By leaving England, plain and impoverished spinster Emma Forbes hopes to leave behind the pain of losing both her inheritance and her fiance... She gets a position of governess and English teacher to the wards of Ignace, a cold harshfeatured French nobleman living in Arles. He is bitter and cynical, and sardonically amused by her schoolgirl level French. But then the plague, the Black Death comes to the little walled town....