The evening Rose Bentley takes a short-cut home across the marsh proves a fateful one. Panicked by the rising tide and struggling on a sprained ankle, it is no wonder she imagines seeing a dead body in a mud-drowned gully. Her rescuer Michael Dowland, the brusque but attractive son of the mill owner, assures her there is nothing there. In the cosy warmth of the kitchen at Dowland's Mill, visions of dead bodies do seem far-fetched, and soon Rose begins to fall in love with both man and house.Once installed in the Mill as Michael's wife, Rose sees a different picture. Despite her gentle manner, Mrs Dowland rules her family with a rod of iron. More worrying to Rose is the change in Michael who is no longer the loving man she married. But Rose is only beginning to discover the truth about the family at Dowland's Mill . . .
August, 1914. The comfortable lives of the aristocratic Barsham family are set to change forever with the onset of World War I. Over the next four years, the strength of character of the four Barsham siblings, Gina, Millie, James and Ned, will be tested as never before. They will encounter hardship, danger, heartache - and unexpected love.
When Hannah Fox's younger brother Sam is ridden down in the street by Thomas Truswell, the spoilt son of the most powerful industrialists in Sheffield, she sets off to the Truswell's estate to complain. Lady Truswell is taken with the hot-tempered young girl who has come to demand an apology of her son. Promising to deal with Thomas, Lady Truswell offers Hannah a position as housemaid on the estate. But Hannah's father forbids her to have anything to do with the Truswells. In his anger he reveals that his grandfather was once in partnership with a Truswell, who stole his silver designs and made a fortune that should have rightly been shared with the Foxes. Dismissing this as history, Hannah resolves to defy her father - only to find that the Truswells' taste for treachery is not all in the past.
The year is 1916 and twenty-year-old Poppy Barlow is clearing the desk of her late father when she comes across a faded photograph of her father with his two sisters - aunts that Poppy never knew she had - along with their address. Poppy contacts her aunts, and is thrilled when they invite her to stay with them in Sheffield. But while Dale House might look grand from the outside, on closer inspection, the place is run-down and crumbling.Poppy determines to change all this and applies for a job at the local scythe works - to the horror of her aunts. As Poppy learns to survive, she is tormented by many unanswered questions. Why had her father rejected Dale House? Why had he never mentioned his sisters or the past? And what could have happened between her aunts and Frederick Kenton, her new boss, that could cause them so much anguish every time his name, or the scythe works, is mentioned?
After a London pub brawl, in which her beloved father is injured, thirteen-year-old Sally Stangate and her family must flee to begin a new life in the Essex village where he was born. But when they arrive, Sally has an uncanny feeling that her future in Wyford will be ill-starred. Her premonition proves to be well-founded; six years later, just after the outbreak of World War I, an old family secret destroys her hopes of marriage to Tim, the man she loves, and estranges her from her family.Determined to put the past behind her, Sally goes to work in her Aunt Becca's antiques shop. When she falls in love with a young shipwright, Sam Bridges, she believes the chance of happiness is hers once more - but Sam's mother opposes the match and Sally is forced to watch her lover go off to war at the very moment when she needs him most.
After the death of her mother, Mollie Barnes is sent to live in her aunt and uncle's house and forced to endure her aunt's simmering resentment. One day, the tension explodes, leading to a shocking revelation about Mollie's parentage. Every day, Mollie had been working by the shore, under the shadow of a large and imposing house. Now she knows that the master of the house, James Grainger, is her real father, she vows that one day she will sit at his table. But her dreams of finding acceptance are shattered as she finds herself the unwilling object of her half-brother's affections . . .
Bethany and her mother are left destitute following the scandalous death of her father. Forced to leave their beloved home with little more than the clothes they are wearing, their last hope is to prevail upon their only living relative, Bethany's Great Aunt Sarah, who runs a coaching inn and reluctantly agrees to let them stay.Bethany impresses Sarah with her attitude to hard work and soon manages to convince her to build up the business again. As trade at the inn improves, their future begins to look secure. But trouble lies ahead, not only in the rumours of a planned railway, but also in the form of Zachary Brown, and itinerant labourer who takes a shine to Bethany, but who is not all he seems . . .
Abandoned as a baby, Joanna was brought up by the cruel farmer who found her and put to work on his land as soon as she could walk. Despite such hardship, Jo still keeps her spirits up, strengthened by the knowledge that she was discovered in a luxurious blue velvet cloak - evidence that her true mother must have been a fine lady. When successful factory owner Abraham Silkin decides that she has the potential to make him a good wife, Jo believes that her dreams of living in splendour are finally coming true. But she hasn't bargained on her forbidden attraction to Abraham's godson. Nor does she realise that the truth about her family lurks just around the corner - and is getting ready to reveal itself on the most important day of her life . . .
Rachel Gardner's family life is far from a happy one. Her father, Stanhope, is cold and remote and her mother Nellie seems to care for nothing but housework. Then, one day, Stanhope collapses in the street and dies - and the fa ade he had built up carefully for so many years is revealed as a sham. Sad and confused, Rachel leaves home and flees to the one place she has known parental kindness: the home of the rector's daughter Angela, her school friend. As her feelings for Angela's elder brother David deepen into romance, Rachel believes she has everything she ever desired. But after the outbreak of the Second World War, David joins the RAF and returns horribly injured, refusing to see her.Fate, however, gives Rachel another chance at love. And just as the pieces of her once-shattered life are falling into place, a new disaster threatens everything she holds dear.
When Ginny Appleyard's childhood sweetheart returns home after his racing season aboard the yacht Aurora, her hopes that he is bringing her an engagement ring are shattered, as Nathan disembarks with Isobel Armitage; the daughter of Aurora's owner. Instead of the hoped-for proposal, Nathan tells Ginny that he is leaving their home town and following Isobel to London, to pursue his dreams of becoming an artist.Already distraught at the tragic death of her father, Ginny is devastated to hear that Nathan and Isobel are to be married and her heartache is compounded when she discovers that she is expecting Nathan's child. Forced by her mother to choose between a loveless marriage of convenience to the rough sailor Will Kesgrave, and the more sinister option of being 'put away', Ginny Appleyard's future is far from certain . . .
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