Charlotte Brookes flees her lecherous guardian, McBride, taking her younger sister with her. After a year on the road, they stumble into a Yorkshire village where the Wheelers, owners of the village shop, take them in. This new life is strange for Charlotte, but preferable to living with McBride or surviving on the roads.
Harry Belmont is an important man in the village, but he’s missing something in his life. His budding friendship with Charlotte gives him hope she will feel more for him one day, and hewill marry the woman he yearns for.
When McBride discovers where Charlotte lives, his threats begin. Harry fights to keep Charlotte safe, but World War I erupts and Harry enlists.
Left to face a world of new responsibilities, and Harry’s difficult sister, Charlotte must run the gauntlet of family disputes, McBride's constant harassment, and the possibility of the man she loves being killed.
Can Charlotte find the happiness that always seems under threat, and will Harry return home to her?
Fleur Stanthorpe, an Australian, arrives in Whitby to live out a dream after surviving cancer. She plans to rent a shop and open a bookshop café, and experience the English way of life for the summer before returning home and settling down. Only, she hasn't counted on meeting gorgeous Irishman Patrick Donnelly. Their attraction is instant, their goals a world apart. He's looking for a solid relationship for the first time since his divorce five years ago, while she's having her last fling at freedom before returning home to family and responsibilities. Their problems reach beyond surviving a hot summer of romance, as both of them wonder what will happen when the season draws to an end and Fleur returns to the other side of the world. Can one brief but delicious affair be enough to keep them together?
1867: Nicola Douglas attends a lecture given by Miss Maria Rye, the founder of the Female Middle Class Emigration Society, which inspires her to change her life. With no family, but a good education, she boards a ship to Australia with high hopes of a fresh start in a new country as a governess. Sydney is full of young women with similar ambitions and equally poor prospects – but when a wealthy benefactor appears, she finds a foothold. What she never anticipated was the attention of two suitors: Nathaniel, a privileged and attractive English gentleman; and Hilton, a beguiling American. Nicola reaches a crisis – the prospects of finding love, and being married, show how empty her life has been since her parents' death. However, her career at the Governess Home is vital to her. Can she have both? Or would her career alone ever be enough to sustain her?
