Here's a bit from my novel where the heroine first meets the hero. He's just been thrown from his horse, who refused a fence, and Lucy has just secured the horse and is offering her assistance. There's lots more dialogue and action going on than I'm quoting here, since it's a longish scene. Obviously, I let her describe him more than she would anyone else:

To my relief, he was already sitting up, methodically flexing and stretching his left arm. He was a dark-haired young man, Julius’s age or perhaps a few years older, wearing immaculately fitted riding clothes. I knelt beside him. “Sir! Are you injured?”

“Not very seriously, it would appear. But how is Ghost?” he asked, looking over my shoulder at his horse.

The ethereal gray mare was well-named, I thought. “She seems sound, I believe. I’m sorry I startled her.”

He scrambled to his feet, and I did the same. He looked at me properly for the first time, and I noticed his vivid, dark blue eyes. I had never seen such a color before. “Not your fault, unless you’re the one who caused that gust of wind,” he said. “And I must thank you for taking the trouble to secure her. You must know horses.” He had the voice of a cultured, educated gentleman, but with a faint hint of some regional accent I had not heard before, with richly sounded vowels and a lilting rhythm. It was pleasant, I thought.

(Stuff happens. They talk. He gets up and goes to examine his horse. Lucy checks out the horse, a gorgeous silver-gray Arabian, with all the ardor Laura Ingalls felt for Almanzo's brown Morgans.)

I turned my eyes from Ghost to examine her master more closely. He was a compact man, only about five and a half feet tall, but wiry and well-proportioned. His fair skin contrasted with his black hair and dark blue eyes—more the blue of a clear lake on a sunny day than a sky blue like my cousins’. As for his face, I would not have called it a handsome one, nothing to compare with Julius. To me, who had taken his blond, even-featured perfection as my standard of beauty, this man looked far too harsh. His nose was too strong, his cheekbones and jaw too pronounced. A lean and hungry look, I thought, like Cassius in Julius Caesar. I did not think him a handsome man, but once you looked at him, it was not an easy matter to turn away.

I managed. Mr. Wright may have been striking, but the mare was exquisite. “She seems very gentle,” I commented.

“That she is, but spirited, too.”

I hid a smile. No man, I supposed, wanted a horse whose dominant trait was gentleness. Indeed, I suspected that the reason this man galloped about the countryside on an elegant little Arabian rather than a rangy hunter like Hal and Julius favored was yet another species of male vanity. A short man would not show to as good advantage on a seventeen-hand hunter.

And that, dear readers, is how I describe people when I want to go into a bit of detail about it.

(Hoping the resounding silence means that everyone has gone to bed but me--however, if I have committed florid over-the-top description above, I'm welcome to suggested edits.)

Susan, I'm an ass. I read it and thought, what great voices, and, oh, he's short, how cool! and then started wondering about short heroes and how well they'd sell, and then that led to wondering about what made Amanda Quick, aka Jayne whatsises' books sell with her less than perfect heroines, including the one with the feeder hero, and that led me to thinking about romance and novels and....

Erm, it's good and I like it a lot. I really enjoy well-researched regencies. I did notice:

....I had never seen such a color before....with a faint hint of some regional accent I had not heard before

repetition of before...before

Good point--I have a bad habit of repeating words like that in a rough draft.

As for him being short, I hope it won't be a problem--she's short, too, so I haven't been brave enough in bucking romance trends to make her a tall woman with a short man. I made him that way partly because I'd already made him a handsome man with black hair and blue eyes and I didn't want him to look like he came straight from Central Casting, and partly because I happen to like the body type of such medium-short men as JM, Alexei Yagudin, and Ichiro Suzuki (though the latter at 5'10" is only short by baseball standards), so I wanted to give it to a hero.

Well, I've never read a novel where the hero was only 5'6", but I have read some regencies where he was 5'8" - 5'10" and comparisons were made to his 'more manly' friends and compatriots. Though, somewhere along in the novel, he surprises people with his wiry strength if he isn't introduced as being 'strongly built' at the beginning. I can only think of two at the moment, but they were well-done and enjoyable. I'm lousy at authors/titles though, so I can't tell you who did them.

Heh. I'm boggling that anyone would automatically equate taller with "more manly." I mean, haven't they looked at men like the ones I named? Humina humina....

including the one with the feeder hero

Que?

I think that description is good, though you do repeat words too closely together for my personal tastes (because it's a HUGE tic of mine), but I like it.

But, another personal thing, Julius's - I think this discussion has been had before, but I would use Julius'.

Oh, Jayne Ann Krentz writing as Amanda Quick had a chubby heroine who got lost in the antartic or some place very cold like that, and got all slim and ethereal. The faux hero liked it and would frown at her if she reached for a second dinner roll. Our manly (and jaw-droppingly gorgeous) hero would offer her the roll, butter it for her and add more jam because he liked her with an incipient double chin, erm... a softness to the lower jaw and thought she needed feeding up; though, of course, he was bad for her and couldn't marry her. He showed his love with food. I feel like I should do a, "thereluvissopure!1!" thing here, though Ms. Krentz is all about the female orgasm, usually before she knows such a thing exists. She learns at the hands (inadvertent pun) of the hero in most of those books, I believe.

I have read her only as AQ, and, somehow, the thought of the feeder hero is just as creepy as the disapproving starverer faux hero.

But, another personal thing, Julius's - I think this discussion has been had before, but I would use Julius'.

I can't find my copy at the moment, but I'm 99% sure I'm doing it the way Strunk & White say you should.

As for repeated words, that's something I'll need to look for carefully when I'm editing this thing, because I'll be writing slowly, or get distracted or take a break between one paragraph and the next, and will honestly not notice I've done it. Just a bad habit of mine.

I'm going to go try to sleep, though I doubt it will go well, since this house is too damned hot. Sigh.