Gender-Reversed Regency Romance Wanted

[redbrunja]

I have been binge-reading regency romance, and besides coming across an actual ‘90% of the conflict centers around two characters not talking to each other’ plot (I had forgotten these existed except as theoretical examples of what NOT to do), I have read about a lot of wealthy, powerful men and the in-financial-straights women who love them stories. Don’t get me wrong, I totally get the appeal of ‘now you have regularly have hot sex with a guy who loves you and now all your money worries are over and you’re LOADED’ as a fantasy, but it has left me DEEPLY craving a story about a duchess who decides to take, I dunno, some hot, broke, strapping young man into her bed. He teaches her about the wonders of life she’s been missing, she teaches him the joy of love-making and in the end, marries him to take him away from his life of toil and strife.

Comments

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

It's not quite this but... have you read Judith Ivory's The Proposition? It's a reverse Pygmalion-tale of sorts with a hero who's a ratcatcher and a heroine who has to coach him to pass as a Viscount at a ball. (Ivory's historicals are really fantastic if you haven't... they're a bit older now as most were early 90s I think. She doesn't write any more unfortunately.)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I added it to my amazon wishlist!

[just-shai.livejournal.com]

I want one about a Bow Street Runner and a Lady's Maid.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Can they solve murders together? THat sounds like a couple that would solve murders together.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Anne Perry has a whole series about this- a Bow Street Runner who solves mysteries with the woman who becomes his wife. To be fair, he (character's name is Thomas) actual marries above him, but this couple's maid helps solve the mysteries with her employers too, and she and another Bow Street Runner are adorable together. The series is the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt mysteries.

[just-shai.livejournal.com]

I actually started a cyber/steampunk version of this idea, once upon a time.

[just-shai.livejournal.com]

Also, it was a Jack the Ripper retellilng.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I put the first mystery on hold from the library!

[qualapec.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I know of any books like that, but it's funny how similar that is thematically to the Titanic and Anastasia.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

True... although the interesting thing about both of those examples, is that the high-born lady ends up moving DOWN in class (or, in the case of Anastasia, staying with the class she'd been in) whereas in the romances I've been reading, the heroine ends up moving up a class and then staying there.

[qualapec.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't even think about that! Yeah, I'm not sure there are any stories I can think of that handle that well, then. Or when they do, it's because someone is after the heroine for her money and she's being forced to marry him.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I realized after I posted this that I do have an example from a (good) regency romance that I read recently (A Lady By Midnight) in which the hero (who originally turned down a captaincy and planned to travel to America and live on the frontier) ends up taking the captaincy so he can marry the heroine (who is of a higher social class than he is).

And I think that Han/Leia kind of has implied elements of this? In that Han's moving up in the world as the films go on - Leia certainly isn't running off to be a smuggler with him.

[empressearwig.livejournal.com]

This isn't QUITE what you were looking for, but it was the closest I could come up with: Duchess by Night by Eloisa James (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2283547.Duchess_By_Night).