It’s a double dose of HaBO goodness this Tuesday. This request comes from Becky who is searching for a historical romance and hoping that two side characters eventually had their own story:
I read this book in the last 5 years, and I may be mixing it up with a Grace Burrowes book. Heck, it may be a Grace Burrowes book. What’s memorable to me is the last scene.
Throughout the book, the hero was aided by his large, attractive, and I think Irish stable master. The stable master is the only guy the hero trusts, and they seem to be best friends more than employer/employee. The stable master had a sidekick, a young man who was feminine looking, a bruising rider who is called on to test the hero’s best horses, and always seems to be around the stable master.
In the last scene, or nearly last, the hero and heroine walk into the tack room at a race track in order to get some privacy, only to find the stable master and his sidekick (really a girl) already using it for that purpose. The heroine thinks they’re gay, but the hero sees the sidekick’s breast, so he figures out. He’s been deceived (he’s not angry) and starts asking questions. The stable master says they couldn’t be together at home, so he left and she followed him. He was going to go back home to fight for their relationship.
I am dying to know if the stable master and his lady’s story was written but can’t remember the author! Help! And thanks!
Someone please find this book because I need to know more about this Irish stable master!
Well, the Grace Burrowes book that really focuses on horses and such is Lady Eve’s Indiscretion, which… might be it, but I am not sure; it’s been a while since I read it, and a quick skim of the last twenty pages doesn’t bring up a match. The heroine in that one definitely dresses as a man to win a horse race towards the end, though.
The book is Trenton: Lord of Loss, by Grace Burrowes. The stable master is Catullus. Though the end of Trenton’s book does sound like it could be an opening for one on Catullus, I don’t think that’s been written yet.
I enjoyed Trenton’s book. The one Wench mentions, Lady Eve’s Indiscretion, is among my very favorites by Burrowes. Enjoy!
A solved HABO and a book recommendation! Yes! I have a couple of the single-named lord books by Grace Burrowes I haven’t tried yet, but now I’m a little more intrigued!
Burrowes’ books come up free with regularity on bookbub, so I’ve jokingly said that I will own all the Lost Lords series soon without ever actually purchasing one. I’m glad that people enjoy them, I haven’t gotten to those yet!
Grace Burrowes often writes the stories of her secondary characters, so maybe a Catullus story is in the works. The one I am waiting for Daniel’s True Desire in November. The hero is the brother of the heroine in David, Lord or Honor and a man of the cloth.
I’m going to say it’s a Windham series, Grace Burrowes book, because those are the only one’s I’ve read and I know I’ve read the one where the girl follows the stable guy. I think the girl is lower nobility but enough that her father wouldn’t have approved, or she wouldn’t commit because of that, so the dude left but she followed to convince him…I want to say it worked out but for some reason I get the feeling that it didn’t, and the stable guy does get his own story but with a different woman…maybe?
Burrowes just publishes them so fast, and took a while to get into her writing style that she wasn’t an immediate buy for me, especially since I have so many immediate buys on my TBR list
Burrowes:horses as Sharon Miller:cats.
Not the book you are looking for, but an enjoyable read using a similar trope is The Earl and His Tiger by Elizabeth Moss. Said tiger is actually a female who fled an abusive situation. She successfully hides her gender until that fateful day . . .
Also one of those early-in-the-Cynster-series Stephanie Laurens books has the heroine as a stable boy, training the hero’s racing horses. Ummm… Rogue’s Proposal. (I had to look it up)
Hah! I should have known there was more than one Burrowes that focused on horses. I’ve only read one of the Lords books, but read all the Windhams.
Also I am adding a few of these others to my TBR pile, because once it’s over a thousand, what’s a few more?
I love her books, all of them ever, and then some.
Joan Wolf has written a couple of Regencies about girls who work with horses. I don’t remember if the heroine in “A London Season” dressed as a boy, but the hero is a stable master. And in “Fool’s Masquerade” the heroine runs away from home and is disguised as a groom, working in the stables of a Lord(who is the hero).
Nora Roberts also had an early trilogy called “Irish Legacy” that sound a bit like this HaBo.