This HaBO request is from Vittoria, who originally posted this on reddit. Warnings for child death:
I’m sorry but I don’t remember many details. At first I was convinced that it was one of Sheila Simonson’s books – it was well written, and rather slow when it came to the romance because the hero and heroine didn’t spend a lot of time together at the beginning of the book.
I’m not sure if they even had a correspondence going (I might have been thinking of the epistolary relationship of The Bar Sinister) so discount this detail.
The heroine (a peer, not a governess or employee) is rather young and has been caring for the (very possibly bastard) toddler son (or nephew) of the hero at his country estate.
She might be a relation of the hero’s or his dead wife’s/sister in law’s, or perhaps have joined an elder female relative in taking care of the child.
(There were interesting conversations between women that -gasp- would maybe even possibly pass the Bechdel test at the start of the novel even though maybe not since I’m 99.9% sure that the child was male.)
She grows very attached to the child and brings it up, very happily resisting feeble tentative suggestions by her family that she may be of an age to be thinking about her own future and prospects. However the child dies of some sort of childhood illness or plague.
The hero and heroine meet at the child’s funeral, but he is very remote and self-hating because he couldn’t bring himself to love his (well technically his) son or get over the betrayal of its mother (who is long dead possibly in childbirth).
No idea what happens next, sadly.
Work your magic, Bitchery!
This sounds a lot like one we had in the past few months.
Sorry, I have no idea! But now I’m interested in reading this book, if you ever get to know its title!