SOLVED. "Stranger in my Arms" husband comes back a very changed man and wife likes him more [s]

[Tess]

I think this book was written in the mid-90s to 2008. I got it from the library.
The heroine has been living pretty well in her manor house, maybe in the country, for several years while her husband is away. I think the husband was a soldier or a sailor. She didn't like him much - he was mean, and I seem to remember the sex wasn't very good.
Now she hears he's coming back and she's dreading seeing him again and having to be his wife. But the husband who comes back is kinder and gentler, and treats her much better. She ends up really loving her husband.
Spoilers!!!


Turns out the "husband" is actually some half brother of the real husband, who died (pretty sure he died, not just ditched). The half brother has heard about the pretty wife and huge estate, so he decides to go impersonate the husband and take over. Surprise surprise he falls in love with the heroine. Eventually he tells her the truth and they live happily ever after.

[Dee]

ugh - I know this book!! lemme think on it

[Tess]

Stranger in My Arms was suggested, and looks kinda right. is that what you think too?

[Yue]

Hmmm.. actually the plot is the same as the movie "Sommersby", starring Jodie Foster and Richard Gere...

[Ann aka Iftcan]

I think that there were several other movies (Including, I believe one in French) with the same basic premise.

Maybe because of that movie tie-in, it really does sound familiar.

[Karen]

The French story/movie is "Le Retour de Martin Guerre" but I don't remember much about it.

[Goge (BARRONS) le Moning Maniac,]

I just read this this month or last month. It IS .

SPOILER:

The heroine's husband was lost at sea, his cousins I believe that was who they were, took over his home and title (Earl) and dumped the heroine in this small cottage. She still went to the manor or house but she just didn't live there. The opening scene in the book she's at their old house/manor (the one she lived in before his 'death'). Her name is Larissa or Lara. She was happy, content, independent and she liked living without a husband. So she was "living pretty well" in her terms. She is a caring person and donates and helps out at orphanages. At one point she even brings home a little Prison boy. His dad was hung and he had no relatives so he had to stay at the prison then later at an orphanage that had no room for him. The husband was a posh being who was very social and had a non-secret on-going affair with his mistress. The heroine was fine with it, happy with it, because she believed herself barren and he didn't bother to make her 'feel' or anything the rare times they were 'together' so it was painful, trying, and she was happy without it. The husband had done such an awful job at the bedding, the newly returned husband (who turns out to not be her husband in actuality) had to bargain later to allow her to bed him (she held a welcome back party for the false husband and the donations received went to a fund for helping little Prison children. In the end, he said 'no, go back to bed' to her because he didn't want to have to coercive her to bed him. Also, she invited his/the real husband's prior mistress to the welcome back party to distract him from her promise of her body.)
Back to the fake husband: turns out the 'husband' is actually the half brother of the husband and that's why they look alike. When the real husband sailed to India, because he heard he'd be rich there, he met the half brother or our hero of the story there. The hero of our story was a bastard baby, mom was a mistress or just some other woman and the dad had been a player. But he'd always gone back to the mom that's why she tolerated him. But when it turned out her husband had beget a child, she was not pleased and told the dad to put up his son for adoption. The son gets adopted and shipped to India. The dad had wanted to keep the son but no, he obeyed his wife. Our hero/the fake husband/the half brother of the real husband grew up with his adoptive parents yelling at him and sneering in his face saying how no one wanted him and he was an Earl's son but they threw him away because he was a bastard baby and that he had a half-brother who was heir to an Earldom. The hero who never gets named, he keep the name Hunter Hawksworth, was intrigued and spied on his half-brother and went through his stuff and saw him/our heroine's real husband constantly sleeping with other women and her letters to the real husband and her little locket with her picture in it. He kept the little locket because he fell in love with her through her letters/words/personality to the husband and her picture. He wanted to meet her and was angry that the husband had a perfect life and wife at home but was sleeping around and didn't care for the wife. The husband kept journals of special events, certain birthmarks people had and stories and secret info and gossips. He liked to keep track of people and events. The hero read these and that's why he could pretend to be the real husband ad knew certain things about people. One day in India, while sailing the real husband's ship went down and everyone on it was lost/dead. The hero who'd been wanting his whole life to have a normal life (he's an assassin, a contract for hire) and a woman like Lara decided he'd go to her and fake being her husband. Because this was an once in a lifetime opportunity, this was the life and woman/potential love he wanted. Everything was perfect and he had to do was step into the role as her husband. He knew it wouldn't last but he wanted just a bit of time to feel happy and pleasure and relaxed in his life. He ends up going to jail because this one guy who hired him once (who our hero also saved the life of) ratted on our hero and told the heroine he's not "Hunter Hawksworth" but a guy for hire, a cold dead calculating chameleon assassin. Embarrassed, upset, conflicted, our stupid heroine tells the greedy cousins (the ones who'd thrown her out of her manor/house when the real Hunter was proclaimed 'lost', the same ones who called our stupid heroine a whore and screamed that they'd never rest until they got the title back from Hunter and her) and they make the police jail him. Hunter/our hero/fake husband/half brother of real husband is going to be hung but first he needs to go to court. The real Hunter's mom makes her first appearance, she'd left to go visit somewhere and announces that Hunter (the one in jail, our hero) is Hunter's half brother, the one she'd told the adoptive parents to promise to move to India far away from here because she didn't want to see her husband's bastard baby. She's old or so now and regrets being so harsh, she says she'll accept Hunter, the fake one, to continue to be Hunter and not be hung if Lara chooses to keep him, save him from death. It's Lara's choice. It's not about right or wrong or honesty, it's if she loves him and wants to keep him. Also, she's now pregnant, she loves him, and the mom regretted telling the son to marry Lara since he'd had his own love
(the mistress) and that's why Lara didn't have a happy marriage and neither had her son. So Lara goes to court for Hunter's trail (fyi: our hero keeps the name Hunter and he wants to forget/throw away his life of before Lara so I'll continue to call him Hunter). She announces it's because Hunter is feeling guilty about cheating/having a mistress that he's gone to drastic actions and wants to be sentenced by the court of law [there was that episode where the H/h had a welcome back party and the mistress was invited for all to see (that was the heroine's naughty doing, remember how she wanted to break her promise with Hunter? The bedding + the funding for the orphaned Prison children)]. Things happened.. including Lara's sister's abusive husband(he's constantly throwing her down the stairs and then she/wife comes up with an excuse like I love him I have to try harder)/real Hunter's BFF saying how he's not Hunter if he doesn't have this one tattoo which he does. In the end, it's declared Hunter is Hunter. Hunter was against it though, he kept saying he wasn't Hunter because he'd lied to his love/Lara so he wanted to leave her in peace and die and stuff but no she wouldn't let him. He wont' return home, Lara goes home and wakes up to screaming. Her sister/wife of wife-beater/BFF to real Hunter is dragging miscarried wife to stairs, he throws her down the stairs, drags her to bring her home with a gun and when he's about to hit our heroine, the hero comes striding in. He should have came before Lara's sister was once again abused. Somehow or another, the bad guy who needs to be rid of is shot and killed and disappears from that world in the book. So all is happy, and reunited (fake husband who will now become real husband and wife of Hunter/Hunter). She tells Hunter she's pregnant and besides that she loves him, ect, they make up, she/heroine tries to match-make her sister up with a guy who likes her sister and.. yeah I don't remember the last two or so pages. It's Happily ever after though. The End.





IS THIS THE BOOK? I just told you everything that happens in it, if it didn't ring a bell then it is NOT Stranger in My Arms. Good luck!

[Tess]

thanks! it totally was that book, and now I'm reading one of the other suggestions which has a similar plot.

hooray!