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!
This request comes from Dorothea, who is looking for a book she read long ago, back in the 80s. Warning – this one is a wee bit graphic in paragraph 3.
There's this book….I'm not sure if I want to reread it, or just find other people who have read it so we can huddle together, rocking quietly in a corner, hugging each other. I really need to know if it is as traumatic as I remember, or will be as painful, awkward, and anti-climatic as so many of my adolescent memories.
I read it many long years ago, in the early days of my ventures into historical romance. I think it is even older than Olde Skool, because my horny teenager self was very disappointed at the lack of bodice-ripping: nothing more arousing than a fervent embrace at the end, as I recall. The hero may have been a proto-Angry Boner Man, since he got increasingly grumpy until suddenly he declared his love, but I was too innocent to recognize the type. I'm pretty sure I read it before 1980, in hard cover from my library–not a category romance. Not only was I new to romance, I think this was the first time I became aware of the author as an individual who made choices of what to include in the story: anyone who could dream up That Scene must be One Sick Puppy, I realized.
Set I believe in the 18th century (ie Georgian rather than Regency, but I'm far from sure), the book opens in Newgate Prison where our heroine, a Plucky Pickpocket with a Heart of Gold from the Mean Streets of London Town, has befriended a gentle, gently-born young lady who has been imprisoned by mistake and cannot convince anyone of her innocence and true identity (hate it when that happens). The warden of Newgate–or rather, as I apprehended, the author of this book–is One Sick Puppy because on Saturdays he forces the women prisoners to fight each other. In the scene that forever scarred my teenage psyche, one woman slashes another's breast with a whip or chain, and the breast is hanging off but still attached…hold me, please, just hold me.
After that it gets better, as I recall. Our Intrepid Urchin and her friend the delicate flower of English gentility have been trying to avoid catching the eye of the Nero of Newgate, but alas, the ladylike lass is picked and is forced to fight. She of course is hopeless at it and quickly sustains a mortal blow, but has time before expiring to beg our Gutsy Guttersnipe to find her nobleman brother and tell him of her sad end. Our Honorable Thief can do no less, and upon her release or escape from Newgate she finds the house of the brother Lord Grumpy. He refuses to believe her admittedly implausible tale and throws her out…or maybe gives her a job? Somehow he comes to find out that yes his little sister did die at Newgate, ergo he was unfair to the Spunky Scrounger and must make amends, or at least make her a lady.
So we have a Pygmalion situation where Lord Grumpy moves the Artful Dodger into his house and turns her into a lady, complete with back board for posture and lessons in etiquette and elocution. He grows grumpier and grumpier, I believe, and his breeches grow tighter and tighter as the sight of her plucks his pockets. In the end the Gallant Gamine is all dressed up with nowhere to go because once she is ladified, she is neither fish nor fowl and what will be her future? He tries to marry her off but cannot bear to, his breeches are too tight, his love can no longer be denied, She Shall Be His…cue the fervent embrace and fade to black.
So is this book too old for anyone here, or does that swinging breast ring any dim and troubled bells among the Bitchery?
My brain holds onto stuff like that, too, but in this case, I have no recollection of this book. Do you recognize this one?
This sounds disturbingly familiar. Let me wrack my brain to try and figure it out.
That sounds awfully like “The King’s Brat” by Constance Gluyas. It’s not Georgian though, it’s Restoration England.
@Nicolette—That could be it. I know I read that one many years ago, and it sounds right. We’ll see if your pick lives up to Dorothea’s awesome description.
Sounds like the right one, and there is a sequel also, “Lady Benbrook”
You bitches are a-maz-ing!! It must be The King’s Brat, although I must say I had no idea she goes “from the Hideous Jaws of Death to the Lustful Embrace of a King,” as one blurb has it. I thought the Lustful Embraces ended with the Earl. I can even buy it from Alibris, although my query there amongst the Booksleuths got nary a nibble.
And a sequel too? This may be more than I can handle. But read it I must! “The streets were her school, whore-masters and thieves were her teachers…No law was stronger than the licentiousness of the age.”
Many thanks to Nicolette and Olivia, and to Sarah for posting.
Yay! I’m happy that we found it for you.
To be honest, this was one of my own personal HABOs for a while. I borrowed it from the library as a teen, and then forgot to write down the title and author. I remembered the title, but by the time I went back to look, it’d been removed from the catalogue.
It wasn’t until Amazon came along and I could do a search there, that I found I hadn’t misremembered the title and I hadn’t been making up the book all along.
I have not read this book, but listening to Dorothea’s description was awesome. Now, can we make her do reviews on recent books she’s read also? Maybe she can just read to me aloud before I go to bed at night. Great review on a book she couldn’t remember!
Available at Amazon (used) very cheaply.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0446911259/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used
It doesn’t sound like a romance, but more like pre-Romance or something. Books like Forever Amber, which I devoured and still own. But not even I could believe there was a happy ending for Amber.
I think there was a brief time when this type of book was very popular, HEA or not. Would they be historical fiction? Was the history that accurate?
And this book must be Restoration if she was in the arms of a King. 😉 Charles, ye devil!
Well, I can see why people who aren’t dedicated romance readers would conflate two kinds of old-fashioned novels, the sweeping historical epic with a female protagonist where love and/or sex play a major part, and the book which fits the same description but also ends with a HEA (or happy by the standards of those rapey times anyhow). That’s why so many people describe “Gone with the Wind” or “Forever Amber” as romances. So, I think that the often-repeated assertion that the only thing absolutely necessary to make a romance is a HEA, is an oversimplification, because it would sometimes make for an arbitrary distinction. If “Forever Amber” was the same up to the last 50 pages, and then Lord Carlton’s wife died and he married Amber, would that automatically make it romance?
According to goodreads, first published in 1972, which makes it an entire generation or more post Amber/GWTW.
I like the idea in vasha’s post of a happy for the times (HFT?) moniker. Not exactly a HFN, probably not an HEA. If there is anything that old-Skool historicals (and hey, actual HISTORY) has taught us, happy for the times is quite the accurate description for a lot of these heroines.
WHY is that whenever I don’t have time to check in, the HABO is one I get in one note?
The BFF and I LOVED this book and the sequel My Lady Benbrook, even though it starts out with a huge downer. Really, I had it at opens in Newgate. But who’ll believe me now?
I totally forgot about Constance Gluyas! I read all of her novels and the Angelique novels when I was in 10th grade (way back in the 80s). Now I have to go back and research all her novels.
DonnaMarie, I believe you! There’s that certain haunted look we share, all of us who read That Scene; that click of recognition at the sight of a chain, or whip, or flame-haired lass taught by whoremasters…we can pick each other out of a crowd, give each other a silent nod of support, and then go our own ways down the mean streets of St. Giles, warmed by the knowledge that there is someone else out there who stared down the Sick Puppy and survived.