This HaBO is from Kate and she’s looking for a historical romance:
I’ve been trying to remember the name or title of one of my first romances for twelve years now, and no amount of Google searching can salve my curiosity. I remember enjoying it for the action-y scenes at the end (although my tastes have greatly evolved since the days when I used to stealth-buy crumbling Old Skool romances from our small-town Goodwill). Can anyone help?
Here’s what I remember about this book:
- It was a worn paperback I bought second-hand in 2006, so probably published in the 80s or 90s.
- The cover had a lot of colors and stuff going on, but they were muted jewel tones instead of the violent fuchsia and teal. Maybe the main couple in a royal purple and pine green forest.
- I think it was a Regency.
- The plot revolved around a mine which should have been the heroine’s birthright, but for some reason was bequeathed to a rando dude who may have been named Nicholas. Nicholas shows up to the heroine’s crumbling estate and small village and starts modernizing the mine. There are rival business interests who stir up rebellion among the mine workers. At the climax of the book, the mine workers riot, and I think the heroine is trapped inside her carriage and has to be rescued.
- The first time they have sex is either in a stream or in the rain. Either way, it’s outdoors and they get soaked.
- Now for the WTFery that has made this book stick in my mind for twelve years: the heroine is sixteen. But she laments how, because of her family’s declining fortunes, she had to cut short her London Season and come back to the village . . . three years ago. Yes, our heroine debuted in London society at thirteen!
Mine workers and some outdoors action. Someone knows this book.
Except for the inheritance part it sounds a lot like THUNDER AND ROSES by Mary Jo Putney. A rich story and well worth a look see.
Some of the details don’t seem to align, but a search for mining romances led to Mary Jo Putney’s THUNDER & ROSES (1993, with a jewel-toned peacock cover), which has a hero named Nicholas and “Skinny dipping with penguins in an English estate pond in the springtime,” per one Goodreads review.
Don’t know if that’s your book, but I’m checking it out just for the skinny dipping with penguins.
The hero named Nicholas and the mine sound like Thunder and Roses, but not the details about the heroine. If I remember correctly, in Mary Jo Putney’s book she was a teacher, and the daughter of a Methodist preacher, so a London season never would have been on the table.
Been awhile since I read Thunder and Roses, so I don’t recall a lot of the details, but the stuff with the heroine’s age and London season is definitely not from that book. I think she was a school teacher.
This reminds me of Jude Deveroux but not sure the details line up with any of her books.
No it’s not MJP, she would never have a sixteen year old heroine. The heroine in Thunder and Roses is a school teacher and she is blackmailed by the “gypsy earl” into having an affair. There isn’t a riot but a cave in at the mine IIRC.
Some of these details remind me of Mary Balogh’s LONGING. I read it several years ago, so I don’t remember if there’s stream sex, but I know there’s a miner uprising.
Is it one of Patricia Gaffney’s Wyckerley trilogy, maybe Forever and Ever? That one has mines…
It’s not the Patricia Gaffney or Mary Balogh books, but the Balogh one looks interesting – the heroine is a mine worker! Thanks to everyone who has replied so far!
@Mandy, I forgot about LONGING by Balogh. That is an excellent book that centers on the plight of miners. If I recall there was a rebellion of a bunch of miners at the end of the book and the Lord actually comes to the rescue of his own set caught up in the aftermath. I think he set off to rescue the heroine and stumbled across his miners in the process of being arrested. Really great story.
(said in my best Alan Rickman voice) “Miners! Not minors!”
…slinking back to my other galaxy.
It’s been 20 years since I read it, so I’m not sure if this fits, but maybe Wishes on the Wind by Elaine Barbieri?
I know this is a late addition but I was going through some old paperbacks and ran across one that *might* fit. Somewhat. The heroine is NOT that young. There is a mine but owned by the hero. It’s crumbling and falling apart but he wants to save it rather than sell out to an even worse owner. His mine overseer is in cahoots with the other man trying to buy the mine. The heroine is married for her money and allows this because her reputation was ruined when she had a child illegitimately whose now 6yrs. There is a memorable first time sex scene that takes place at a bath pool. The miners rebel because of so many accidents (caused purposely by the overseer to force a sale). So SOME of the elements are the same and it’s a great story even though old skool.
OOps! the above book is My Only Love by Katherine Sutcliffe.