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 request is from Charlotte. She’s looking for a historical romance:
I am looking for a romance novel. I think it was Regency but not sure.
The hero leads a double life and is known as a rake, but has a secret identity as a merchant or something like that. Wears glasses in his secret identity.
Thanks a lot for your help.
If we’ve learned anything from “ugly duckling” romantic comedies, it’s that taking off your glasses changes everything.
Three Nights with a Scoundrel
by Tessa Dare
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This might be Tessa Dare’s Three Nights With a Scoundrel? I don’t remember whether the rakish hero ever wore glasses, but he definitely had a secret merchant-ish identity.
Isn’t there one where the hero owns a merchant company, but hides it, cause you know, working=gross, but there starts to be problems with the local ruffians and they attack the warehouse? Maybe the heroine is there and gets hurt? (For some reason I also want to say it’s fabric/dyes, but I feel like that one may be different, where the heroine and hero are both merchant families and are competing.)
I second Three Nights with a Scoundrel! There’s definitely a scene where the hero puts on glasses and changes clothes while he explains/shows the whole secret merchant identity to the heroine.
How about An Indecent Invitation by Laura Trentham? The hero puts on glasses to hide his identity as a spy (Really???)
Yup, that sounds exactly like Tessa Dare’s shoutout to Superman!
I’m sorry that I don’t know this one, but I just wanted to say… this thing with the glasses. I mean, where the girl takes off her specs and suddenly the hero/everybody suddenly realises “that she’s beautiful”. Are they idiots???
“Rogue Spy” by Joanna Bourne? He’s gentry and a merchant, she’s a merchant (daughter who took over the business for her father) – they’re both spies. Not sure he wears glasses, but she gets hit on the head by a cartwheel in the first scene. Still reading the book.
I took my glasses off once during class to wipe them and someone sitting across the room (we were sitting in a semi-circle) literally yelled ‘Aaaagh!’ in shock, so idk.
My understanding is that the glasses we have now are significantly more flattering than they were decades ago, partly (but not entirely) because the lenses are much more compact than they used to be.
“Taking off the glasses changes everything.” Yep, I can’t see or hear a damn thing. Judgement is to be mistrusted.
Currently reading Three Nights with a Rogue, all if y’all already Knew it.
Yes, it was Three Nights with a Scoundrel! Thank you so much 🙂
I once had a coworker tell me that she couldn’t hear me because she wasn’t wearing her glasses. She wasn’t deaf or hearing impaired in any way.
Dear Scene Stealer –
With all due respect – clearly, you’ve never had to wear glasses. It is a scientific fact (in some or another book somewhere in some library on Planet Earth) that the tempular pressure of the glasses on the top rim of the ear has a direct and positive impact on the level of hearing. Thus, when the (pressure of the) glasses are removed, most sound becomes inaudible and/or incomprehensible.
I will go to my grave believing that.
Signed, Four-Eyes
I don’t know about scientific fact, but I definitely don’t hear as well without my glasses. I’ve always assumed that I use a lot more lipreading than I’d imagined.
I know this totally has nothing to do with the HaBO, but being terribly short-sighted, I agree that I also don’t hear so well without my glasses and believe this is because we do tend to read emotions and facial expressions to understand some of the words that are not clearly enunciated.
Language is a mix of vision and sound so this makes total sense. I am also taking that to my grave as I have used this excuse many times over and cannot back off now!
Terrible vision here and I def can’t hear without my glasses on.
I also put my glasses on (they’re rarely off, anyway) when I want to hear better.
But, oddly, I’ll turn off the radio in the car when I’m looking for something because I can see better in the silence (apparently). LOL.
@Betsydub
Madam, I have been wearing glasses for a frightfully long time. I get it, but I still laugh at the memory of my friend picking up her glasses, putting them on and then asking me to repeat what I had just said.