This HaBO comes from Aviva, who isn’t quite sure if they want to find this historical romance:
I hesitate to even ask, because what I remember of this book does not sound great, but it’s been driving me crazy.
It was written in the last ten years for sure, and what I remember is that there is a Scottish male protagonist who has been wronged (badly) by an English lord. He is obsessed with revenge, and decides the only acceptable kind is to kidnap and seduce the English guy’s daughter. I think it was an ‘eye for an eye’ scenario, but I don’t remember what exactly he’s avenging.
He wants to take it further, however, and send the English dude’s daughter back to him “belly ripe with seed” or maybe “belly ripe with Scottish babe.” Whichever it is, it gets said A LOT. The girl’s belly eventually gets, well, ripe, and he falls in love with her, and thinks about keeping her.
Somehow he has a change of heart and does send her back to England (belly ripe AF) and I do remember that he shows up in England to win her back and walks in on her giving birth. Happy ending rapidly ensues, I think.
Does anyone recognize this ripe belly?
It sounds like The Villan duology, by Victoria Vale, although I don’t remember her getting pregnant. I do remember her getting ‘disgraced’ by having lost her virtue to the Scotish brute.
To me it sounds like the McCabe trilogy by Maya Banks, specifically In Bed with a Highlander.
To me it sounds like it was written 40 years ago! There were A LOT of books with this plot and seeded bellies back then. And I read most of them.
Hmmm I can’t recall the name but I think I can add to this one. The girl’’s mother and the young hero are caught in bed by the husband who is actually a brute. He gets the hero sent to hard labour for 10 years and he’s chained to an oar for that time. He also locks the wife in the bedroom and sets the house on fire. She escapes unknown to anyone until later in the book. To get revenge the hero does get the daughter pregnant and sends her home where the father now hates her and the older brother pushes her down the stairs in hopes of her losing the child. She breaks a leg in the fall. She goes into labour where she is tied to the bed with little care. The hero arrives, beats the brother up on the front step, breaks his leg and goes in to find her. He helps her deliver a son and a daughter and takes the three home. She is later
reunited with the mother.
I’ll search my shelves for this.
This has so much crazysauce, Omg!
This description gives me the heebie jeebies.
A couple of Catherine Coulter’s romances had this plotline, I think it was the Devil duology. They were Italian and North African protagonists, though, not Scottish. (Speaking of crazysauce…I just skimmed The Devil’s Daughter recently, I don’t know how I read them so many times in my formative years because yowza. Definitely not heroes.)
Pretty sure this isn’t it, but it’s similar and features a Scottish hero wronged by an Englishman who decides to take revenge against the daughter: If You Deceive by Kresley Cole
TW FOR INCEST AND RAPE:
Might be a Nancy Richard Akers book? I know one of her Scottish romances has this plot, but the heroine thinks she’s barren thanks to years of rape from her impotent uncle producing no heirs. Hero kidnaps the heroine to get revenge on the Uncle for killing his brother, did not expect her barrenness to be an issue. So she and the hero have to wary around one another as her uncle avoids paying the hero’s ransom, until they handfast and fall into Real Love. And it turns out the fertility issue was on the Uncle’s side and heroine is pregnant by the end of the story.
Old Skool Romance, everyone! /needs stiff drink after dredging that one up from my memory.
I just reread this one – Dream Lover by Virginia Henley.
Bent on revenge after five years on a prison ship, Sean O’Toole, Earl of Kildare, kidnapped his enemy’s daughter. Her name was Emerald, an innocent beauty he had known long ago, who had stirred his senses like no other woman. But now he planned to seduce her, abandon her…and bring disgrace to the Montagues. First he would restore the fire to her eyes, make her hunger for his steely embrace — then use her in an act of vengeance. But Sean didn’t expect to find himself caught in the sudden heat of his own desires, bewitched by the magnificent beauty he’d planned to betray…
KariJo, if he’s desperate for revenge on the Montagues, shouldn’t he be a Capulet rather than an O’Toole?
@Jenny — not the Maya Banks books, I read them, and they are about three brothers trying to save their clan. “In Bed”‘s heroine is abducted in the beginning but the hero or his men save her and she agrees to a marriage of convenience. One of the brothers gets rescued by the heroine-healer and they play doctor. The last is…an arranged marriage, maybe?
I’m wondering if it was a reprint since the plot sounds so old school.
If it’s the Virginia Henley, isn’t he Irish? If I’m not mistaken he also lost a finger and wears a glove with a fake wood finger that he uses to pleasure the heroine. It was my first old skool romance read over 15 years ago and I remember being quite shocked at the finger dildo…
The rest of it tracks unless I’ve got two of her novels confused.
I keep scrolling past this and getting a little queasy.
I was thinking a Julie Garwood but that would be older and I can’t find a plot that matches.
Might it be How to Handle a Highlander by Mary Wine? I don’t remember that much but I remember they were enemies.
Could it be If You Deceive by Kresley Cole? It’s been a while, but I think the heroine’s father was English even though there’s a Parisian element? Somehow?
Does it say something about our society that we can all think of MANY books with a plot with these bare bones of plot? A romance troupe of (hopefully) the past.
Does it say something about our society that we can all think of MANY books with a plot with these bare bones of plot? A romance trope of (hopefully) the past.
Julianne MacLean, published 2011, Captured by the Highlander?
Release date: March 2011
Lady Amelia Templeton would rather die than surrender to a man like Duncan MacLean. He is the fiercest warrior of his clan—her people’s sworn enemy—and tonight he is standing over her bed. Eyes blazing, muscles taut, and battle axe gleaming, MacLean has come to kill Amelia’s fiancé. But once he sees the lovely, innocent Amelia, he decides to take her instead…
Stealing the young bride-to-be is the perfect revenge against the man who murdered Duncan’s one true love. But Lady Amelia turns out to be more than a pawn of vengeance and war. This brave, beautiful woman touches something deep in Duncan’s soul that is even more powerful than a warrior’s fury. But when Amelia begins to fall in love with her captor—and surrenders in his arms—the real battle begins…
What about “Beware a Scot’s Revenge” by Sabrina Jeffrey? “Lady Venetia Campbell’s visit to her childhood home in Scotland takes a dramatic turn when she’s kidnapped at pistol point by her father’s sworn enemy. Sir Lachlan Ross is widely feared in his guise as The Scottish Scourge, but Venetia remembers her former neighbor as a handsome youth whose attentions she craved. Now a wickedly sexy man, Lachlan’s appeal is even more intoxicating…and much more dangerous. Though Lachlan tries to treat her as his foe, his scorching kisses tell another story. And despite his plan to use her as a weapon against her father, Venetia is determined that Lachlan’s lust for revenge will be trumped by an even more powerful desire….” I’d have to dig it out to see if getting her pregnant was part of the revenge.
If it’s a short story it could be Emma Wildes’ A Devil’s Bargin.
“Lady Isabelle is a pawn in a game where she doesn’t even know the rules. When she finds herself in the hands of her father’s worst enemy, she might just lose her very soul to a man who offers her a devil’s bargain. With limited choices, she accepts Lord Devon’s proposition. As captor and seducer, he steals everything from her, maybe even her heart. He’s jaded, lost, and bitter. Devon Austin knows his faults, just as much as he knows his innocence. When he exacts revenge on the daughter of an old adversary, he expects to feel freed of his burdens. Instead he finds himself captive, chained by her beauty and sensuality, caught in his own web of retaliation. When Isabelle insists he accompany her back to England to try and clear his name, he yields to the insanity, knowing if he loses her, he might be doomed to hell…”
After she gets shipwrecked on an island, the hero buys her at an auction, tells her he’ll return her to England after he uses her willing body, and oh by the way he’s her father’s sworn enemy. That’s where his scars came from. When he goes to England to get her back after he’s returned her, she’s pregnant.
I am legit terrified by the number of books that everyone came up with that fit this plot. I’m the person who asked this particular HABO – I’ve gone through everyone’s suggestions and none of them are the one I was thinking of! I do remember that I flipped to see what year it was written and it was definitely post-2005.
Super late to this, but it sounds pretty similar to “His Bonnie Bride” by Hannah Howell (originally published as Amber Flame in 1988, republished in 2004, and republished again in 2012).
From the author’s website:
“When Storm Eldon is kidnapped by her family’s ancestral enemies, she knows there are rules to be honored by both sides. If her stepmother agrees to the ransom demanded, Storm will not be harmed by Tavis MacLagan, the handsome Highland warrior who holds her captive. But as days of waiting turn into weeks, it begins to be clear that in this contest of wills, no one is fighting fair. Tavis’s hands-off policy has changed into an all-out siege of the senses, and Storm realizes she is less interested in guarding her virtue than becoming…HIS BONNIE BRIDE. (Originally published under the title Amber Flame.)”
I distinctly remember a lot of references to ripeness, etc. in the book. And she is giving birth to twins when the hero comes to get her back.