[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by library addict

I've been reading this author since 2002 and while I haven't loved every book I feel like I can give this situation a pass kind of. I am still mad, but it usually takes more than one book for me to want to break up with an author.

Was listening to one of my favorite Grace Burrowes books today - Lady Louisa's Christmas Knight - and I'm reminded there's a little in this book that overlaps with the issues you had with the Miller book.

Spoiler:

The hero is a veteran of the Napoleonic War. He's adopted some English children left behind from soldiers' affairs with the local woman. It's the BIG SECRET (well, one of them - the heroine has one too) and he often thinks of himself as having numerous bastards. He fears her reaction to "his bastards". Other male characters know of them, and told their his (at least some believe so).

To make it even stranger, he's a man whose wife bore him two daughters from another man, and it's remarked on that he is fairly scrupulous about not directly calling them daughters (while implying that they are, nonetheless).

It makes no sense. It would be just as likely that he could be concerned that his has 2 daughters and home and 12 adopted children in a Children's Home that he supports - and OMG what will she think?

But other than that, I love both the hero and heroine in the story, and the take on this marriage-of-convenience. So I just roll my eyes whenever it comes up.

It always bothered me as a bit lazy, but it doesn't go as far as the one you described.