Two parallel stories follow two couples, divided by three hundred years. The first couple, Claire and Mark, live in the early 2000's in the USA, the second couple, Edmund and Katherina, around the year 1700 in England. Both wives are foreigners in their husbands' countries, and after a prolonged absence abroad, attending to a dying parent, they each return to a husband inexplicably changed towards them, withdrawing emotional and physical intimacy. Through their husbands' clever manipulations they remain in a loveless marriage until they reconnect with an important part of their youth: playing a musical instrument, and the advent of a music teacher in each time frame. The modern Claire, a writer and poet, unravels the mystery of the estrangement from her husband through researching the life of a little known baroque composer: Gottfried Finger, who originated from Moravia, then one of the Czech provinces of the Hapsburg Empire, and lived and worked in London between 1686 and 1701.