This HaBO is from Lita, who is hoping to find this historical romance:
I’m looking for a romance book. I think it was historical romance.
It featured a young woman who had two (I think) arranged marriages. One of the husbands died due to illness.
I think there was a scene where she had sex under a tree.
It was the first romance I ever read (in middle school, sneaking it from my mother’s room and reading a few pages at a time in the bathroom).
I know of a similar title but the timeline doesn’t match. Oh well!
Blaze Wyndham, perhaps? I dont remember sex under a tree but there was sex in all sorts of settings. It was one of my first romances too!
Did you hide it under your mattress by any chance? Worked for me with steamy novels until my mother decided it was mattress turning day, oh that was fun!
Thank goodness for ebooks…
Could it be Mary Balogh’s A Matter of Class? That one has an arranged marriage plot and sex outdoors (possibly under a tree), but I’m not sure the other details match up.
It’s been a while, so I’m blanking on the details, but there was an Eloisa James series with a secondary heroine who was widowed. And a hero (possibly not hers) who had sex in a cow pasture under a tree and worried about sunburn on his butt…..
Definitely not the book, but there is also Joanna Bourne’s Black Hawk with sex under a tree in the rain.
need more details…. date of book? was it a category or a bestseller? anything?
Julie Garwood comes to mind for me. Maybe The Bride? I remember loving Alec & Jamie.
@Kit, I had the exact same experience! Then we had to Talk, as the book was INAPPROPRIATE (conservative religious household). Haha.
I think it might be a Small, but not Blaze Wyndham. Maybe the one about the sheep heiress? Rosamund? There’s under the tree sex in that one, and two arranged marriages that go sideways before she marries the hero.
Judith Ivory’s: Untie my Heart has all the sheep but can’t remember the rest. Fun book to read though, as all her novels.
@LisaF, my first thought was also Bertrice Small. Maybe Jasmine? Nah, the OP would have remembered the harem…
This is probably far off, but any chance it was Their Eyes Were Watching God? It had a memorable sexual awakening, though not actually sex, under a tree scene.
When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn? The second marriage was definitely not arranged. Don’t know about the first
@QOTU – Hah, that’s how I approached this one – “It sounds like a Small but without her harem stuff”, which narrows down the pack.
There’s an old Mary Balogh, “The Trysting Place”, which might fit the description. Felicity was young and beautiful and in love with her neighbor, Tom, but her family is poor and in debt and so arranges a marriage for her with a much older, wealthy man. When she returns home a widow, she and Tom reconnect. The trysting place of the title is an oak tree where they make love for the first time (she is, of course, the dreaded virgin widow).