To prove to his future father-in-law he was worthy of his fiancée's hand in marriage and not merely an idle second son, Edward joins the Hussars. Sent to Spain to fight Napoleon, he is shot in a skirmish with the French and his horse falls on him too. The army report to his parents he has been killed in battle.
In fact, he is only badly injured and is taken in by a local monastery. They secretly nurse him back to health, teach him the local language and disguise him as a monk. Many months later, he walks across the mountains of Spain to the Atlantic coast and is then taken by fishing boat to the British army in Lisbon.
Finally he reaches home, more than a year since he left, only to discover everybody thought he was dead. While he was away, his brother died in a hunting accident, his father the earl died of a stroke, his cousin seized his inheritance, he is refused admission to his own home and his fiancée married someone else. This novel is clean, wholesome and contains no erotic content