This HaBO request comes from Jacquie, who wants to find this Harlequin romance:
I stumbled upon your website from Reddit. There is a book I have been trying to track down for years, with zero luck.
Here goes:
It was a Harlequin historical romance novel, from before 2000 (I think likely from the 1980s or 1990s. I think I read it around 1998…it probably wasn’t new then though).
The man in the story was a ship captain who was in town for a short time, and the woman was mistaken for a prostitute, but she was just enamored with him. She had bright green eyes. The captain was gone by morning, and she found out she was pregnant after the encounter. The child had green eyes too. Years later the captain visits the area again, and doesn’t recognize her, but tries to woo her. He buys her soft leather gloves the color of butter. I think by this time she is a shopkeeper or innkeeper…I can’t remember.
Sorry if that’s not much to go on. I’ve emailed Harlequin about it but they weren’t helpful, since this is before they started digitizing their books.
Can we identify this one?
Several elements of this HABO were in a Carla Kelly book I recently read.
Carla Kelly wrote the Channel Fleet Series about 15 years ago so the timeline isn’t right . Terrific series BTW.
Very curious now.
Following
I have definitely read this, probably ~1996. She loves the gloves but they are Not The Kind of Gloves a woman of her station wears.
The Admiral’s Penniless Bride? Carla Kelly
It’s not the Admiral’s Penniless Bride, he is retired and marries the FMC fairly early on in that book. They do separate for a while because he’s a complete jerk about something in her past and when he finds her again he learns she is pregnant. (That book was ruined for me by his insufficient groveling.)
The novel Duchess by Josephine Edgar has some similar elements= green eyes+baby+gloves, and involves the heroine working in a shop. It might be too old, though: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4303163-duchess