Generation Game

Rosanna had given up everything to save her family home... but was it all for nothing?

- VERONICA HENRY

Mickleford Manor was a blessing and a curse. Rosanna loved every faded pink brick in its facade. Every glittering window pane. The weather vane. The clock over the stable yard. The walled garden and the apple orchard and the ornamental lake. But it had nearly broken her.

It had been in her family for more than three hundred years. But when her beloved father Michael died, it would go to her brother.

Of course it would.

Despite the fact James could barely bring himself to step over the threshold, he was so busy living it up in Monaco or Hong Kong or wherever it was he made money. She couldn't think about the injustice of it, or she would go mad.

But that was the tradition: the house would be handed down to the eldest son. Even though she was the firstborn.

It was made even more unjust by the fact that it was Rosanna who had kept Mickleford from falling down around everyone's ears. It was twelve years since she had found her mother in tears in the little sitting room, going through all the bills, while her father poured a stiff brandy and spilled the beans. It looked as if Mickleford Manor might have to be sold.

Of course Rosanna had stepped in. That was what they were relying on.

She knew she was their last hope, for she had the skills they lacked. She was smart and savvy and entrepreneurial, and had always told them they needed to make the house work for them so it could realise its potential and provide an income stream.

The idea of the Davenhams losing their family home appalled her. She couldn't bear the thought of Mickleford in someone else's hands, or what they might do to it-turn it into flats, very probably.