Emma Streat is a freelance agent for British Intelligence.
To the world in general, she is a former opera singer. She is also a 47-year old wife of a highly successful industrialist and the mother of two young men now attending college and living away from home. That home is a handsomely refurbished older dwelling in Connecticut where she and her loving husband planned to eventually retire. Her days as one of the preeminent singers of her day were over as her voice was sadly leaving her but she faced that fact without much regret. She had had her time in the spotlight, enjoyed it considerably, and knew that her other life as wife and mother were even more important.
When, however, her husband is killed in a mysterious hit-and-run while in London on business, she is forced to go through the various stages of grief to eventually end up with burning questions of who and why. That it was an accident as the police initially ruled it did not sit well with her and the evidence she inadvertently unearthed supported that intuition. Tracking down her husband's killers brought her out of the world of rural widowhood, past the exotic nightlife she knew on the stage, away from the corporate boardrooms and dinner parties she endured, and into the shadowy world of clandestine work where people's lives were seldom of importance.
Working with her as she learned the truth, and then in a subsequent adventure that was even more hair-raising, is a member of British nobility, a man who accepts his hereditary position even as he works to make his mark in the Intelligence community. Lord Andrew Rodale is a man in his mid 50's who commands enormous authority and respect from all levels of officialdom, though he has not distinct position in the posted hierarchy. He prefers to let it be known that he "consults for a Ministry" and goes about his business.
Together, the two make an interesting team. On this team, though, he has the power and she gets the work done. She repeatedly shows that having the stamina to go out on the stage every night while raising two rambunctious boys has given her an internal might that most spies would beg for.