HaBO: God Save Queen Bess

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 HaBO is from Rebecca. There’s a whole lot of detail, so I’m confident someone knows this:

Could you help me find a book from (probably) the 80’s? I got it from my grandma and it was not AT ALL explicit. Being able to visit her and come away with a stack of books to read was a huge plus.

It was probably a Coventry Romance regency that featured 3 heroines and 3 heroes!

The main heroine was at least part-French and had been raised in a convent (?) there, had dark hair, and violet eyes. She might have been an illegitimate daughter, who had to come to England after both her parents died, and there was something to do with some jewels. The jewels might have even been paste in the end! ANYWAY.

Her hero was an English lord, of course, who rescued her relatively soon after she arrived in the country. I remember her waking up with a “Qu’est-ce que c’est…?” after have been knocked out (or chloroformed!–not by the hero). He helps her with the whole jewel quest, damning all the censure the ton had for a woman born out of wedlock as he went.

Of course, they had help! Two of his friends (fellow lords) were more than willing to help. Somewhere along the way, the group picks up 2 other women as well, which was handy.

One of the women was a very proper gently-born young lady, who had to learn to see herself as beautiful and powerful instead of delicate and demure as her mother wanted her to be. She was blonde, tall, and not willowy, though in the beginning she tried to dress “fashionably” and slouched to try to make herself seem “more feminine”. She reminded me of Jane Bennet from Pride and Prejudice in personality. Maybe she was “perilously close to being on the shelf”?

Her hero was a svelte, Italian-on-his-mother’s-side lord. He helped her blossom into the Amazonian goddess she was. He loved her body and wanted her to see herself as just as beautiful, if not more so, than the “diamonds of the first water,” and to get out from under her mother’s thumb.

The final woman was a wee Roma pixie with long red hair. She was feisty and prickly and a tomboy, dirt on the nose and all that. Completely outside the ton, though working in the shadows of it. I remember she tried to hide in a clothes press.

Her hero was a veritable blond giant of a man who brought her tiger lilies at some point. She tried to smell them and came away with yellow pollen on her nose, which he teased her about. [It’s so weird what sticks with you through decades.]

Of course it’s originally set up that the big people should get together and the smaller people should get together, but that’s not the way it turns out.

At some point, there’s a ball where all the women attendees have to present “living tableaux” in which all three of our heroines participate: I think one is Athena or Artemis and one is Cleopatra? I’m not sure what the main heroine decides to be: maybe Persephone?

I specifically remember there’s an “elderly knight” in the crowd who shouts “God Save Good Queen Bess!” at the ball, but that has nothing to do with the plot. [See above note about things sticking with you over the years.]

To sum up: three main pairs, all working together to solve the mystery of jewels the main heroine inherits. There may have been highwaymen and a chase at some point. [Probably.]

It’s quite a unique book. I’m not sure when or how I lost it, but I really loved it then and I’d like to read it again! Can you help?

Doesn’t this sound fascinating?!