This HaBO is from Kathryn, who wants to find this historical romance:
I’m looking for a romance I covertly traded with a friend on the school bus way back in high school, so around 1999-2003. It was a historical romance, set in medieval Scotland. It was a forced marriage/marriage of convenience between a Scottish laird and a possibly English lady. The one defining detail seared into my brain was that on their wedding night, she convinced him she wasn’t ready and he cut his thigh so the sheets would be stained with blood and everyone would think they had done the deed.
I want to say it was set on an island of Skye or Skye was in the title? And the cover might have had some red and the couple standing in front of a highly suggestive tower.
This sounds very familiar, particularly the cover description!
Deborah – I’m pretty sure the sex scene in Desire – on the bed of herbs is recycled again in one of the ARcane books, probably the one with Lucinda and Caleb since she’s a botanist, but possibly the one with the mesmerist and the crystal reader because their first sex scene takes place in a conservatory, really probably both. Amanda Quick/JAK/Jayne Castle are comfort reads for me but she recycles plots/dialogue/backstory text constantly. I am loving that the Jones’ are reappearing in the Burning Cove and Fogg Lake books again.
It’s definitely one of Julie Garwood’s! I remember the scene but sadly not the title. They had to hang the bed sheet the next day for everyone to gawk at. Lol.
Or was it Judith Mcnaught’s A Kingdom of Dreams?
This is probably wrong, but what about Lynsay Sand’s “An English Bride in Scotland”
Magpie and Deborah— i kind of love all that recycling. Even in the real world, how much new under the sun is there actually? Its all about the journey.
Have you read JAK’s early scifi stories? Kind of bonkers.
This sounds really familiar, and my mind immediately went to Elizabeth Lowell’s Medieval trilogy. After reading the blurbs for each of the books, I’m leaning toward thinking it might be the third: Enchanted.
I think Skye O’Malley by Bertrice Small. Scene between main male character and a secondary female character. Male character is an Irish lord, arranged marriage because the woman he actually wanted (main female character) was married to someone else and his father wants an heir. Arranged bride panics on wedding night because they pulled her from a cloister for this wedding. Laird is understanding of her fear, bride asks what about the bedsheets, he cuts his thigh and says something to the effect of plenty have brides have fooled around before the wedding and displayed their proof of virginity the next day.