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 Help a Bitch Out (HaBO) request is from Erin, who is looking for a historical she read a long while ago:
I have a HaBO request! I’m looking for the title of a Regency historical I read within the last few years (probably published ~5-10 years ago).
It starts with two sisters and their father living in their country home. The estate is running out of money so the oldest sister brings in some money as a seamstress, but it’s a secret because she isn’t supposed to “work” (gasp!). Her seamstress money is no longer enough so she goes to their rich (and probably titled, I can’t remember) neighbor asking him to help them financially. He counters by saying she has to offer him her hot bod in exchange for his help; eventually she agrees.
The two have a brief affair and, of course, she falls in love with him and also gets pregnant. He says she’s trying to trap him into marriage so he gives her the boot. She has to ‘fess up to her family about what she did and they also give her the boot.
She moves to London and works as a moderately successful seamstress until someone (I can’t who or why) tells her genteel lady customers about her “fall from grace” with the neighbor and they all give her yet another boot. Right when she is sick and has had a loaf of bread that she bought with the last bit of cash in her pocket stolen out of her hands by a street urchin, rich neighbor comes to find her and takes her back to the country. Aaand, HEA ensues…
Thanks for any help that you can provide in hunting down this title!
I hope, right after she beats him with that loaf of bread (because I bet it’s stale) she boots him right in the neighborhood, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Do you recognize this book?
I don’t think that this is one of them, but Loretta Chase has a trilogy of books about some dressmakers. Sisters, I think?
Don’t know which one this is, but I hope she sews the flies of his breeches closed when she moves into his estate. What an asshat!
I’ve read this! Now if I could just remember who wrote it….
Could this be Julia London’s Dangers of Deceiving a Viscount? The heroine was one of three sisters who became a seamstress under a different name to help with the family’s coffers.
The guy sounds like an absolute jerk and yet I want to know its title so I can read this book too.
Jade Lee also has a seamstress in her bride books, but it’s probably not this one, unless it was one of the girls who worked for the seamstress–she was successful.
Sounds familiar I hope you find it.
Isn’t that Julia Quinn’s Everything and the Moon? I’m pretty sure that’s the book you’re looking for, Erin!
I am not sure it would be Julia Quinn Everything and the Moon. When the H/h first get together they fall into a young love romance. There is is a big misunderstanding that breaks them apart she ends up as a governess before moving on to be a seamstress.
It’s not Loretta Chase. Those dressmakers are smarter and don’t accept that crap 😀
I’m curious though
POW! Right in the neighborhood.
This sounds very similar to a book by Brenda Joyce called “An Impossible Attraction”. It’s part of her de Warenne series.
I’ll have to check Julia London’s Dangers of Deceiving a Viscount. That sounds like it might be right, but keep the suggestions coming in the meantime. Thanks!! 🙂