HaBO: Ring Any Bells?

You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!

When I posted this on the SBTB Facebook page, a few people said they wanted to read it, but no one could identify it. And Patricia Milton said that I'd missed a great opportunity to ask if this one “rang any bells,” so Patricia, that headline is for you. 

Stella, who asks that we please excuse her English, writes: 

I am following this blog for some time and I hope you can help me find a book. The smart bitches are my last hope before I start thinking that I really imagine this book.

I read this book three years ago in my summer vacation and lost it. I don’t remember if it was older but I don’t think so. It was a little depressing because the heroine had some mental issues from her childhood, but I liked it and I wanted to reread it after a few months but I couldn’t find it and it’s driving me crazy for the last two years.

The book it’s a historical romance, taking place in USA (Boston, I think), and it’s around 1900’s (not very sure about that too). The heroine was abandoned by her father when she was young after her mother’s death. He sold her to a wealthy man. She broke her leg trying to go back to her father and ever since it is deformed.

Eventually she married the rich guy and now she is a very wealthy widow. She goes to Boston (or New York?), because she thinks (as a last childhood dream) that if she finds the perfect house with the perfect ballroom and wears a gown with a specific color (lavender maybe?) on her birthday ball her father will came back.

 

She buys the house from the hero’s brother. The house was original one that it was divided in to two different for the two brothers. So they are now neighbors. There is some incident in the beginning with loud music playing from a gramophone but I don’t remember what (Bother has a party in the hero’s house?).

The brother is gay and the hero doesn’t know and he is trying to marry him off to same girl. I think this was a point of conflict between H and h, because the hero learned that the heroine knew it and she didn’t tell him.

The H and h accidentally meet in a restaurant where I think the h freaks out and leaves and he later finds her passed out in the snow and he brings her home where he discovers her deformity.

Later the heroine tries to make him do something spontaneously but he is too uptight. There is a bell in the city that indicates the hour and she teases and dares him to ring the bell in a false time. He is searching to find her father and surprise her at her ball but when all her illusions fall at her party she has a breakdown (I think).

Then in order to bring her back he goes and rings the bell. Also, I think there are some horrible cooked biscuits by the heroine. I hope you can help me because I’m going nuts for two years now, so please put this bitch out of her misery.

Anyone recognize this books, balls, biscuits, bells and all?