From Goodreads: "Elizabeth Coke is not prepared to wait three years to obtain a divorce from her husband, a solicitor named Edward Coke. She claims to have been treated with 'exceptional depravity', and to prove this in the divorce courts she has enlisted the services of no less a person than Sir Nicholas Harding, Q. C. Meanwhile, Coke himself is ready for litigation against his wife, in the form of a libel case. She has written a letter to a friend in which she describes the 'exceptional depravity' of which she complains; the letter has been shown to friends and therefore - technically - published. The barrister of Cole's choice is Antony Maitland, Q. C. , Sir Nicholas Harding's nephew. "