Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, was one of the leading personalities of the Middle Ages, and also one of the most controversial. She was beautiful, intelligent and wilful, and in her lifetime there were rumours about her that were not without substance. Her contemporaries were sometimes scandalised by her behaviour. She had been reared in a relaxed and licentious court - where the arts of the troubadours flourished - and was even said to have presdied over the fabled Courts of Love. Eleanor married in turn Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, and was the mother of Richard the Lionheart and King John. She lived to be 82.

Captain John Staple had enjoyed active service too much to ever settle for a life of humdrum respectability. The post of gate-keeper to a toll-house in the Pennines appeared to offer certain unexpected and agreeable diversions. This exciting, witty novel tells how the handsome dragoon becomes involved with an engaging highwayman, a tacituen Bow Street runner and a stolen hoard of coins whilst protecting the squire's attractive neice from black villainy.