This HaBO comes from Jenny, who is looking for this older romance. Content warning for the description below:
I’m looking for a book that I read in the late 90s, but it was older than that. Unfortunately it was hardcover and the jacket was long gone, so I have no visual clues as to what it looked like to spark my memory.
What I do remember is this:
The books opens with the main character (possibly named Henry)’s father being dead and he’s inherited his father’s estate. He has two sisters – a younger one named Charity or Chastity and an adopted sister named Aline, who he’s kind of in love with.
There’s some sort of villain who ends up raping the adopted sister, but maybe she marries him also?
The main character gets married to another girl, but he’s still not over the adopted sister.
There’s also a subplot involving a cameo necklace that belonged to Aline’s mother and something about her unknown parentage.
I don’t remember what happens at the end which is why I am trying to find the book.
Old Skool ahoy.
Okay, this is a REAL stretch, but . . . The classic French Revolution adventure novel Scaramouche, written in the 1920s by Rafael Sabatini, features a hero (Andre-Louis, not Henry) who grew up crushing on his sort-of adopted sister Aline, who is engaged to the villain, and he goes off and has many adventures which include him being engaged to another woman for a while. I don’t remember rape (and there wouldn’t be, this was pre-explicit sex in mainstream novels) but the villain was pretty creepy. And there are some plot twists involving the main character’s parentage. Could it be??
Whether or not that’s the book, Scaramouche has one of the GREAT opening lines in literature: He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad.
Are some posts dissapearing. My reply was showing but has since dissapeared
@Gill, are you in the right thread? You do have a comment in the other HABO.
@DonnaMarie. Oh. Not sure what’s happening here. Must be finger trouble. Mine. Lol
Goodness, this book sounds all sorts of crazy sauce. Sure hopes it ends with a HEA.