This HaBO comes from Skye, who is looking for this historical romance:
I read this book back in 2016 and I remember it had an audiobook.
It’s about a guy who finds a missing heiress. In the beginning, he sees her coming down some stairs carrying a laundry basket or a basket with ribbons. She might have been in a marketplace.
Much later on towards the end of the book, they have sex against a jewel case display while there was a party in the other room. I think I remember a girl in a yellow dress on the front, but that could be wrong.
Does this ring a bell to anyone?
Bitchery, work your magic!
The yellow dress might be from “Heiress for Hire”, Madeline Hunter. It also fits the general storyline, but came out in 2020, so is probably not the book im question.
I feel like I have read a book like this—was thinking Elizabeth Hoyt, Theresa Romain, or Sarah MacLean, but Goodreads is not helping me out here despite me scrolling for yellow dresses. Possible contenders included Romain’s SECRETS OF A SCANDALOUS HEIRESS (wrong color dress), MacLean’s DARING AND THE DUKE (yellow dress but came out in 2020) or NO GOOD DUKE GOES UNPUNISHED (came out in 2013 but a green dress on the cover) or something from Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series (nothing jumps out.) Will just have to check back and see if anyone solves this one!
Maybe Meredith Duran’s “A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal”? Missing heiress found working in factory, and yellow dress on the cover. I don’t specifically remember the sexytimes against a jewelry case, now I need to find my copy to check!
This is frustrating, I know I’ve read a book w/ that scene! I do agree with @Barbara IRT Madeline Hunter but looking through her books, I can’t find anything that fits.
A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal is the Duran with kind of a golden dress on the cover and a missing heiress, but she tries to rob the hero. Can’t tell you about the jewel case.
There’s one by Kasey Michaels with a missing heiress– um, The Bride of the Unicorn. She’s working in a mental institution. No yellow dress, and IDK about the jewel case.
I’ve read a lot of Madeline Hunter, and I don’t recall a missing heiress offhand– besides the more recent series where women were left money and the heirs were not, and the heirs were tracking them down. And those are too recent.
Katherine Kingsley’s Call Down the Moon has a missing heiress; no yellow dress, and probably nothing against the jewelry case.
(I have something of a fondness for this trope, but I’m not coming up with it.)
Probably not what you have in mind, but forever ago I read an old skool Johanna Lindsay historical where a baby princess had been sneaked out of a tiny European nation when her parents were assassinated, but her nanny gets sick and dies and she grows up living a Cinderella type existence in rural Mississippi. Eventually some Duke type from her country finds her and drags her kicking and screaming back to Europe. Near the end there are many jewels because she meets his mistress, and he’s ashamed that his mistress has more and better jewelry than his princess.