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 Kristina, who is looking for this Gothic romance:
I’m looking for a romance I read about maybe 10-ish years ago? I’m pretty sure I own this one, but a scroll through my Kindle library isn’t dislodging any clues…
I think it was a fairly typical kind of Gothic romance possibly involving a nobleman being forced to marry a woman he wasn’t intending to marry or mistrusts and basically treats terribly. The main part that I remember is that the heroine runs away and escapes to a moor or bog or something and lives with an old lady who has a horse and a dog. It turns out that the heroine is pregnant and spends months gardening with the old lady and tending the animals and growing a baby. The old lady dies, leaving the heroine completely isolated in a cabin in the middle of nowhere where she gets depressed and starts hallucinating conversations with the animals. The hero then conveniently shows up (possibly guided by the ghost of the old lady?) at the cabin as it (maybe?) starts to catch fire and rescues the heroine while being abjectly sorry over the way he treated her and the conditions he finds her in. I think he gets a good grovel in before realizing that she’s about to imminently have his baby.
I usually have a good memory for these sorts of things so it’s really bothering me that I can’t remember the name of the book. I feel like it might be an early Teresa Medeiros but none of the plots sound right from the book descriptions. I’d love it if someone could solve this mystery!
Anyone know this book?
Lily
by Patricia Gaffney
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OOOOHHHH, I want to know !
Maybe it’s An Enchanted Affair by Barbara Metgzer?
Nope, Gemma, it’s definitely not An Enchanted Affair. That heroine speaks to fairies but she is not abandoned in the woods.
Except for a few details, this sounds like Lily by Patricia Gaffney.
@ Jeannie
Lily has to have the worst “hero” I have ever read in a romance. I absolutely loathed him and he pretty much ruined the book for me. I wanted horrible things for him and for Lily to woman up and tell him to frick off. I can’t remember details (reader’s amnesia) enough to know if it fits this HaBO but I do remember enough to know it is close. I also remember (thanks to my GR review) that rotten S.O.B, Devon.
@ Jeannie ~ yes, yes, yes! this one was driving me crazy because I knew I had read it. Unfortunately, all of my paperbacks (900+) are packed for a move, and my DH would kill me if I started going through them! It is definitely Lily by Patricia Gaffney.
@jeannie It is indeed Lily! I definitely got some of the details wrong (like them being married, and there’s more groveling than I remembered – the moors part happens earlier in the book than I remember) but this is the book I was thinking of. Thank you for solving the mystery for me!!