Book Details:
Book Title: To Tempt A Troubled Earl
Author: Fearne Hill
Publisher: NineStar Press
Cover Artist: Melody Pond
Release Date: March 4, 2025
Tense/POV: Third person/past tense/alternating POV
Genres: MM Regency Romance
Tropes: Adventure, Enemies to lovers, hurt-comfort, slow burn, opposites attract
Themes: Humorous, aristocracy, scheming shenanigans on the side
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Length: 75 0000 words
It is book 1 in a new series. It does not end on a cliffhanger.
The next book is out later this year
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A chancer and a rogue, Kit Angel is down on his luck. Presenting himself at Rossingley Hall in the dead of night, he begs an audience with the eleventh earl, the most enigmatic nobleman in Regency England.
The visit has purpose. Kit, hungry to ruin the baronet who ruined his sister, believes Rossingley is the only man who can help him.
Lando Duchamps-Avery, Eleventh Earl of Rossingley, doesn’t trust the sinfully handsome stranger one bit. He does not care for the tales he spins, his hot temper, or his thick, ebony curls. And, most definitely, he is not in thrall to the delicious golden hoop dangling from Kit Angel’s left ear. Lando has his own motivations to ruin the same lord, and the two men form an uneasy alliance.
As the dangerous plot they hatch unfurls, the suspicious earl and the shady scoundrel are increasingly thrown together. Whilst the wily earl gradually surrenders to his growing attraction, Kit can’t make up his mind if he wants to swive him, declare undying love for him, or throttle him.
Bit by bit, as mutual desire swells between them, Kit wins over the earl’s body, his passion, and his trust.
But in order to win the earl’s elusive heart? The scoundrel must risk losing everything.
This first book in the new Rossingley Regency romance series introduces Lando Duchamps-Avery, nineteenth-century predecessor to Dr Lucian Avery of the contemporary Rossingley romance series. With Lando’s story, we return to southern England and the Rossingley estate. This book can be read as a standalone.
CHAPTER 1
ROSSINGLEY ESTATE, SUMMER, 1821
“You have visitors, my lord.”
Inglis floated across the eleventh Earl of Rossingley’s sleepy eyeline, looking peevish. Lando swore the man had silken castors in place of feet. With white-gloved hands clasped together in front of his vexed frame, his head butler awaited his response.
“And you have chosen to disturb me about this because…” Lando tilted his balloon of brandy this way and that, playing the flickering candlelight against the delicately engraved crystal. That the evening was late was an irrelevance. He and his butler were of the same accord; visitors at any time of day were unusual, unwarranted, and unwelcome.
“A Mr Christopher Angel, my lord. And his sister, Miss Anne. The young man says it’s important.”
One of a pair, the balloon glass had been a gift from dear Charles. “I know of no one named Angel. Begging the question ‘important for whom’?”
“He didn’t make that distinction, my lord,” admitted Inglis. “But he gave the impression the matter is somewhat urgent.”
Lando took a warming sip of brandy. The drink of the damned. He didn’t especially care for it, but he fancied it lent him a louche, philosophic air. “What is urgent is seldom important, Inglis,” he deemed, pleased with his wisdom. Rousseau himself might make a similar pronouncement. “If it’s alms he’s after, toss him a half-crown, some cold meats, and send him on his way.”
The gloved hands wrung together. “I did try that, my lord. But he’s…ah…more insistent than our usual callers, and neither is he a pauper. And…” Inglis paused. Never let it be said the butler couldn’t milk a drama. “He…he mentioned one of his close relations. His uncle. One…ah…a former cavalry officer sadly no longer with us, God rest his soul.”
As Inglis made the sign of the cross, Lando took another, more contemplative sip. So many good men had fallen during the wars in France, and a chap struggled to keep up. “Oh, yes?”
Inglis cleared his throat. “Yes. A…ah…Captain Charles Prosser, my lord.”
Like rancid vinegar, the fine liquor soured on the earl’s tongue. He fought to swallow it down. Perhaps he should have stuck to port after dinner. Maybe it would have better softened the dull ache now swelling behind his rib cage. Captain Prosser. His dearest Charles, his lover. His heart.
Lando didn’t make his older lover’s acquaintance until after the wars, from which Charles returned hale and hearty. But where French bayonets and the battlefields of Trafalgar had failed, the insidious wasting disease prevailed. An annoying tickle became a cough, a cough tinged with blood. Slowly, inexorably, his lover faded away, their time together, in all of its perfection, too brief. A life only half lived; a conversation forever unfinished. Lando, not daring to be at Charles’s bedside at the end, heard the news of his passing from a mutual friend some two weeks after his lover had been buried beneath Kentish loamy earth.
Three long years ago. Yet even now, at unprepared moments such as this—and was there ever such a thing as a prepared one?—that name still had a powerful hold upon the eleventh earl. If Inglis hadn’t broken the crushing silence, it might have persisted well into the night.
“I have taken the liberty of passing the young man’s sister over to Mrs Sugden, my lord. The girl is in a state of great distress. And I have shown her brother to the small parlour. He’s…ah…not fit for the library.”
Inglis’s waspish voice sounded as if coming from an awfully long way away. “My lord might wish to be more suitably attired before receiving him?”
Tipping back his fair head, Lando forced another swallow of fiery amber liquid. For a second or two, it threatened to reappear, then he pulled himself together. Ridiculous. Three years gone and one mention of Charles turned him into a limp dishrag. Well, it was high time it didn’t. Time to make a clean breast of things. Time to stop bloody moping. Charles would have hated him squandering his salad days drinking alone and brooding in front of a dying fire.
He cast his gaze down his spare frame. Fussy Inglis might wish him more suitably attired, but Lando gave not a fig. As purportedly one of the richest men in England, Lando could host a ball clad in only his underclothes, and the ton would declare it the latest fashion in Paris. He pinned Inglis to the spot with his pale eyes.
“I’m decent. Uninvited callers find me as I am, or not at all. As you damned well know.”
4 out of 5 (very good)
Independent Reviewer for Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
Lando has been grieving his dead lover for 3 years. When Kit and Anne, nephew and niece of Charles, turn up on his doorstep in the middle of the night, his hackles are raised. Especially when he hears WHY they are there. But not all is as it first seems, and there is a duke to ruin.
I thoroughly enjoyed this visit to Rossingley!
Lando is grieving, but for the most part, in secret. His staff are wonderful! But Kit throws him for a loop, not least because he is Charles' nephew (sort of) Once reasons are explained, things become clearer. Then there is the neighbour duke, who needs bringing down a peg or three.
I loved the interactions between Lando and Kit, both at the beginning and right through the book. They are well suited to each other! Not especially heavy on the steam, but just the right amount for this book and this time.
I loved the way the duke was brought down. I wasn't fully in on the plan, as to how it was going to work, but that was just my brain not really putting it altogether! I understood why Lando does what he does, I think it was needed to make Kit see just what he means to Lando.
I'm intrigued by Lando's men, his butler and valet. I need their stories now!
I'm looking forward to returning to Rossingley at some point!
4 very good stars
** same worded review will appear elsewhere **
* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book; the comments here are my honest opinion. *
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Fearne Hill resides far from the madding crowds in the county of Dorset, deep in the British countryside. She likes it that way.
Her queer romance, Two Tribes, was a finalist in the 2023 Lambda Literary Awards.
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