This HaBO comes from Mabel, who wants to find an older Regency romance:
I am looking for an old Regency book. I think I read it in the early 90s, but I cannot remember the title nor the author.
All I remember is that the heroine has an arranged marriage to the hero. She doesn’t like that she doesn’t even know this man and decides to do something about it. She goes to a masquerade and meets him and ends up in bed with him. She sneaks off and when the hero comes to meet his betrothed he doesn’t recognize her at first. Then after, he does he realizes he loves her and really wants to marry her. One of the things he does to convince her is he serenades her – in the book they call it caterwauling.
And that is all I remember.
Have any of you experienced a romantic caterwauling?
Potent Pleasures by Eloisa James has the deflowering at a masquerade and the hero not recognizing the heroine later, but not the arranged marriage part.
I don’t know what book this is, but it sounds hilarious and now I want to read it.
There’s a also time gap in Potent Pleasures and I don’t think a description would be accurate without a warning that the hero is a giant douchecanoe of epic proportions.
@Michelle – good call! Almost all that I remember of Potent Pleasures is what I wrote above, but I do remember that the whole Pleasures trilogy was kind of a train wreck and not at all pleasurable.
Is it A MASKED DECEPTION by Mary Balogh? Published in the mid-1980s. H&h are in a dull, arranged marriage and H does not know his wife is the woman who won his heart at a masquerade ball. I don’t remember the caterwauling though. Apparently, the masked hook-up was a Regency trope at one time.
@DiscoDollyDeb – I looked A Masked Deception up and based on what some of the reviewers said it is not it. In the book I am looking for the Hero actually “deflowers” his masquerade partner. But thanks for another book to add to my TBR. :o)
Good grief, it sounds like a Roman comedy. The kind where Young Man A is in love with a courtesan and Young Man B is in love with a well-born young woman he raped nine months ago at a festival, and he doesn’t find her again until after she has given birth, and then he gets to marry her–to her parents’ presumed vast relief–and, well, who gives a ### how she feels about the whole thing.
Oh, n/m, I’m babbling.
I don’t know what this book is, but it made me think of the serenade scene in the Colin Firth “Importance of Being Earnest” movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tegn6UTOwI
Is it Eloisa James’ “To Wed a Rake”? The heroine is in disguise and the hero deflowers her and falls in love with her, but I don’t remember any caterwauling being done. I loved this book though!
I want to know.
This reminds me of something, I think it might have been Elizabeth Boyle?