Charlie leaves her mother in Southampton and travels alone to London to seek Eve Gardiner's help finding her missing cousin Rose.

Captain Cameron visits Eve's boardinghouse and recruits her as a government spy, citing her talent for lying and her fluent French.

Eve intervenes at a pawnshop to get Charlie full value for her grandmother's pearls and formally agrees to help find Rose for a fee.

Eve meets her contact Lili in Le Havre and is assigned to infiltrate René Bordelon's restaurant in occupied Lille.

Charlie visits Aunt Jeanne in Rouen and learns Rose joined the Resistance, became pregnant, and found work at a restaurant in Limoges.

Eve is hired as a waitress at Le Lethe in Lille after a tense interview in which she convinces René she does not understand German.

Eve and Lili agree that Eve should become René's mistress to extract more intelligence, hiding the arrangement from their male superiors.

Charlie argues with her mother in Roubaix and vows to continue the search for Rose rather than proceed to Switzerland for an abortion.

Charlie and Finn visit a destroyed French village and a survivor confirms that Rose and her infant daughter were killed in a Nazi massacre.

Eve and Lili are arrested at a German checkpoint while trying to deliver critical intelligence about a planned large-scale German assault.

René discovers Eve's true identity and systematically breaks all the bones in her fingers with a bust of Baudelaire while interrogating her.

Eve reveals to Charlie that René was the informant who betrayed Rose's village to the Nazis, uniting both women's quests for justice.

Lili, Eve, and Violette stand trial for espionage; Lili pleads for her companions and all three receive long prison sentences instead of death.

Eve and Charlie confront René at a Grasse restaurant where he admits causing Rose's death without remorse and Eve warns him she will kill him.

Eve shoots René dead in his villa as he tries to kill Charlie, and a telegram arrives confirming Eve never actually betrayed Lili.

Charlie St. Clair defies her family to seek out the broken, reclusive Eve Gardiner, hoping Eve can help her find her missing cousin Rose. Eve, a scarred World War I spy, agrees to help only when she realizes the search may lead her to René Bordelon — the collaborator who tortured her and destroyed her life. Their road trip across France unearths Eve's wartime past alongside Charlie's devastating present, culminating in the discovery that René was responsible for Rose's death in a Nazi massacre. Driven by shared grief and vengeance, the two women track René to his retirement villa in Grasse and force a final confrontation. Eve kills René and is herself nearly killed, but Charlie uncovers the truth that frees Eve from thirty years of false guilt, allowing both women to rebuild their shattered lives.

The core quest — two women hunting the man who broke them both.

Charlie arrives at Eve's London door to find her drunk and waving a Luger, but Eve lets Charlie stay after hearing the words Le Lethe and Limoges.

Cameron takes Eve to the beach at Folkestone to train with a Luger after Allenton excludes her from the weapons segment of spy school.

Charlie, Eve, and Finn cross the English Channel with the Lagonda; Eve tells Charlie she hired Finn partly because of his criminal record.

Charlie tries to seduce Finn during their overnight stop in Lille, but he declines, telling her she needs a better reason than that.

Eve overhears a German Kommandant discuss a new artillery battery position and passes the intelligence to Lili, who is ecstatic.

Eve overhears that the Kaiser will make a private inspection tour through Lille, presenting the Allies with a potential assassination window.

Lili reveals her true identity as Louise de Bettignies to Eve after being recognized by Prince Rupprecht at a border crossing.

Eve and Lili watch from the countryside as the Kaiser's train passes through Lille, but the promised Allied bombing raid never arrives.

Eve discovers she is pregnant with René's child; Violette performs a secret abortion that saves Eve's ability to continue as a spy.

Allenton arrives at the Limoges hotel and delivers a case containing Eve's wartime medals, which she refuses to accept.

Eve seduces Cameron in Tournai to prevent him from sending her home; she also learns that his personal code name is Evelyn.

Finn loses his temper at a restaurant proprietor in Limoges and accidentally punches Charlie in the face before fleeing in shame.

Eve returns to Folkestone after the war and refuses her military medals from Cameron, accepting only the small pension he arranged.

The trio spends weeks searching Grasse without finding René until a maître d' finally recognizes his photograph and names his villa.

Eve sends Charlie a Bentley for Finn, redeemed pearls as a wedding gift, and a note confirming she never betrayed Lili.

While the main plot races toward a showdown with René, a rich layer of secondary events quietly builds the world around it. Eve's recruitment and training reveal the double standards female spies endured, from being barred at weapons school to being warned that sleeping with the enemy would destroy their credibility. Charlie, Eve, and Finn forge their unlikely bond during the cross-Channel voyage and the long drive through France, sharing secrets in cheap hotels and the cramped interior of Finn's Lagonda. Eve's dangerous intelligence work in Lille — overhearing artillery positions and the Kaiser's travel plans — demonstrates the stakes of her double life, while her pregnancy and secret abortion show the personal cost of that work. The aftermath of their journey includes rejected medals, a violent outburst from Finn, and a long search through Grasse before René is finally found. The pool closes with Eve's quiet act of redemption as she sends Charlie a Bentley, a pair of pearls, and the truth.

The supporting moments that shape the journey and deepen each character.

Eve's interest is sparked and she agrees to help Charlie after hearing that Rose worked at a restaurant named Le Lethe in Limoges.

Allenton warns Eve during spy training that Cameron was convicted of fraud and served prison time before joining intelligence work.

Lili welcomes Eve into the Alice Network and explains that Cameron gives all his female agents the French names of flowers.

Violette threatens to shoot Eve at her antique shop and reveals that René was still alive as recently as 1918, contradicting what Cameron told Eve.

Charlie confides to Finn in his parked car at night that her brother's suicide left her so demoralized she began sleeping around.

Charlie tells Eve she will not have the abortion and insists Eve should come with her to find out whether René is alive or dead.

Charlie counts the group's money during the drive to Paris and discovers that her mathematical talent makes her feel genuinely capable.

Cameron tells Eve he went to prison to take the blame for his wife's insurance fraud scheme, protecting her from prosecution.

Eve confesses to Charlie and Finn that she visited Limoges with René in 1915 and realized that weekend she was pregnant with his child.

Finn tells Charlie about the gypsy girl who died at his feet during his regiment's liberation of a concentration camp, a memory that haunts him.

Charlie asks Eve to tell the full story of what happened after René caught her, committing herself to helping Eve rather than just finding Rose.

René tells Eve — after dosing her with opium during torture — that she gave up Lili's real name and all her aliases while delirious.

Charlie calls Violette from Grenoble to request the original espionage trial records, suspecting a lie is buried in the documentation.

Violette's telegram arrives in Grasse confirming that another spy — not Eve — exposed Lili's true identity to the Germans.

In the epilogue, a healed and adventurous Eve reunites with Charlie, Finn, and her godchild Evie Rose at a café in Grasse.

Beneath the action of the main plot lies a deeper story of secrets revealed and turning points crossed. Eve's commitment to the mission is forged not just by duty but by personal grudges and buried guilt, while Charlie's transformation from a passive runaway into a decisive woman happens through a series of private conversations and startling realizations. Key revelations — that René may still be alive, that Eve was once pregnant by him, and that René manipulated Eve into believing she had betrayed her closest friend — slowly reframe everything both women thought they knew about the past. Charlie's decision to investigate the original trial records proves to be the linchpin that liberates Eve from thirty years of undeserved self-hatred. The pool ends with the truth finally delivered in writing: Eve's guilt was a lie engineered by René, and she is free.