After an uneasy start to their marriage, Cherry and Lance Melchior are now living on a small working farm. It's a very different life for both Lance, a once-rich playboy, and Cherry, a former kitchen-maid. But when Lance's brother dies he becomes Lord Melchoir, and must return to Bristol to run the family estate.

The first in a new saga stretching into World War II and beyond about the Elkins family and their hotel.

Set in the poignant days before the WWII. Charlotte Elkins was preparing for her wedding to the local blacksmith. Her younger sister, Josie, knew that Charlotte would be happier with the local newspaper reporter, but nothing short of an earthquake would shake Charlotte's determination to go ahead with the wedding and Josie knew how to provide it.

Kitchen maid Cherry O'Neil is besotted by the son of her wealthy boss, and when she is seduced by him she imagines herself truly in love. The feelings take a sharp knock when she thinks she may be pregnant. Her brother, a rough, bare-knuckle fighter, thinks this is a perfect opportunity to blackmail her lover, Captain Lance Melchoir.

It is the early days of the phoney war and Alice Chase is awaiting the impending birth of a fifth child. With the arrival of two young evacuees in her sister-in-law's household it seems that the war is finally changing their peaceful lives in the Somerset village of Bramwell.