HaBO: Heroine Named Gates of Heaven

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!

Welcome to Tuesday, better known here as HaBO Day! HaBO, or “Help a Bitch Out,” is our attempt to reunite readers with romances that they can remember parts of, but not the important parts like the author’s name or the title. This HaBO request comes from Drew, who is searching for a Harlequin historical. Maybe:

So I think it was a Harlequin historical of some sort that I ran across back in the early 2000s (not sure how old it was then – I read a lot of books by raiding my dorm mates romance collection).

Things that are memorable:

– The  heroine’s name was literally “Gates of Heaven” (crazy preacher/pastor father), but everyone just called her “Gates.” You would think a detail like this could significantly narrow down the options and make it findable on Google, but if you try to search any iteration of “Gates of Heaven,” “Character name,” “heroine,” “Harlequin,” “romance,” etc. Google just dives you right into a Bible wormhole.

– The hero and the heroine meet in the woods and he accuses her of being a fairy sprite/brownie of some sort (she spooks his horse? or he falls and blames her?).  She is a bit of a hoyden/wild child but she has no one (father recently died?). The hero is attracted to her, so he takes her off to London with him to work in his home, or some other ridiculous I-need-a-way-to-justify-this pretext. He thinks she is a country bumpkin because of the way they met, and it will take a long time for the reality of things to get through his thick skull (example: later on hero’s younger brother is studying greek or latin or something, and the heroine ends up helping him with his homework cause she knows obscure languages. Her upbringing was unorthodox, but she is super smart).

– While in London, Gates pisses off the hero’s French chef to the point that the chef quits. The hero is understandably upset (he went to great efforts to steal the chef from someone else?) but then the heroine takes over the cooking and all is forgiven because she rocks.

– The hero is preoccupied with wooing another woman with a sizable dowry, so though he likes Gates, he is trying to convince female Richie Rich to marry him most of the book (and considering if there is a way he can have Gates as his mistress? He does know better but ATTRACTION!, men being lead with their penises, etc.). When he does finally realize that every time he imagines his future it is with Gates at his side, Gates has already run off and he has to go back and find her in the woods where they first met to propose, and thus the book comes full circle.

Mostly I want to re-read it to see if the heroine is as unique and awesome as I remember her. Plus I love the stories where the hero loves the heroine despite himself. The hero is a little Mr. Darcy-ish, minus the arrogance and money. Anyone else remember this one?

With a name like Gates, someone is bound to have heard of this one!