Spotlight & Giveaway: How To Train Your Earl by Amelia Grey

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Amelia Grey’s new release: How To Train Your Earl

A roguish earl must fight using his honor and not his sword to win his lady’s hand in How To Train Your Earl, the third book in the First Comes Love trilogy from bestseller Amelia Grey.

Brina Feld has settled into a life devoted to helping others since the sinking of the Salty Dove left her widowed. She has no need for a man in her contented life. But when the notorious and handsome Lord Blacknight returns and awakens her desires, her peace and serenity vanish. If she agrees to an alliance with him, she knows she will have to battle her heart to keep from being snared under his spell.

Zane, the Earl of Blacknight, was never supposed to inherit the earldom, so he didn’t much care to lead a respectable life before then. Fistfights, card games, and drinking are the order of the day. Now he’s determined to change his rakish ways and he knows the proper lady who can help him. There’s just one problem: He’s already bet he’ll win her hand before the Season is over. With her resolve to out-scheme him, how can he show her that his love is true?

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from How To Train Your Earl 

Chapter Two
The road to perdition was easy compared to the road to redemption. Zane Howard Veldon Dormer Browning, eighth Earl of Blacknight, should know. He’d traveled on both in his near thirty years of life. His name alone had been enough to make him want to find his own way and not be subject to long-held traditions and stiff manners he cared naught about following. Why work so hard to become the standard bearer for gentlemen when just being a man came so naturally?
And was infinitely more enjoyable.
The first thing Zane had done when he arrived in London late yesterday was to pay his respects to the Dowager Countess and offer sympathies. Her sorrow and grief were still evident and enormous. Out of regard for her suffering, he hadn’t stayed long.
The second thing he’d done was find a distraction. That had come in the form of spending all night at the Brass Bull Gaming House. The sun had come up hours ago, yet he and three other men still assembled around a table in the private card room. Raucous laughter and lively scores played on the pianoforte from the night had settled down. He could now hear sounds of horses, carriage wheels, and occasional chatter from people passing by filtering in from the open windows below. The streets outside were busy with Londoners going about their usual daily lives—as was Zane.
But he couldn’t forget that things had changed for him now. For the better or worse was yet to be known.
Two months ago, one of Zane’s uncles, who was the Earl of Blacknight at the time, his only son, and a cousin who had been in line for the title, were killed when the bridge over Blacknight Canyon gave way and their coach tumbled to the bottom of the dry ravine. In the blink of an eye, the succession of two heirs to the earldom were gone, and Zane had become Earl of Blacknight.
After the horrific news finally reached him in Vienna, he and his errant cousin Robert had left immediately for London. Their journey had been long, beset by an enormous amount of late winter snow and followed by torrential rains that flooded roads, streams, and villages.
Movement from one of the players brought his attention back to the cards in his hands. He blinked his dry eyes several times to clear his vision. It had been a while since he’d spent all night playing cards and enjoying a bottle of fine brandy and female companionship. For his overindulgence, he now had a pounding throb at his temples.
He’d already decided he was on his last shot of the morning when he sensed someone standing not too far behind him, watching his back. None of the players at the table had given whomever it was a bother of a glance, letting Zane know the person wasn’t a stranger to the small private club. He had a fairly good idea who it was—dear old Uncle Syl. Someone must have told the old bachelor Zane had made it to London.
Sylvester Browning, his father’s next to the youngest brother, had taken it upon himself not only to be Zane’s conscience but an unsolicited advisor after his mother passed. Uncle Syl had taken up Zane’s mother’s mantra and urged him to mend his roguish ways and settle down to the quiet, respectable life of a gentleman and start a family. As if there weren’t enough well-thought-of Brownings populating England already.
It wasn’t that Sylvester was an unlikable fellow. He wasn’t, and there had never been any harsh words between them. Zane got along reasonably well with him, except when his uncle’s hovering was irritating—like a bee that wouldn’t be swished away. The two of them had often matched words, but they were always civil. His straight-as-an-arrow uncle wouldn’t know any other way to be.
When the last card hit the table, Zane scooped up his considerable winnings from the night, pushed back his chair, and rose while bidding his fellow gamesters a good day. He dropped the coins into his small leather pouch and cinched the opening tightly. Only then did he turn to confirm his suspicions. Not only did Sylvester wait there for him, his father’s youngest brother, Hector was there too. Zane muttered a curse to himself. Both were staring stone-faced at him, their collars and neckcloths pulled tight as their expressions.
Uncle Hector was something of an oddity in his father’s family. Unlike the rest of the tall, powerfully fit-looking Browning men who sported thick black hair and clean-shaven faces, Hector was of average height, portly, with thinning gray hair and a bushy beard. He used a cane to help him walk and to nervously tap the floor when he was flummoxed. Sylvester, on the other hand, the same stern expression whether he was happy, ill-tempered, or hungry as a goat.
It had been a long time since more than one of Zane’s family had deemed it necessary to seek him out at the same time. He was fairly certain the last occasion was when he was set to duel a stranger who’d had the poor judgment to call him a card cheat. That early frosty morning Uncle Syl had tried desperately to intervene and convince the young blade of Zane’s expert aim and beg him to offer a public apology for the slander. There was no reasoning to be had between the two swill-headed rounders, but out of deference for his uncle’s well-intentioned pleas, Zane had only grazed the man’s shoulder with a clean shot.
“Uncles,” Zane said with a nod, swallowing his dissatisfaction as he swung his coat off the back of the chair and dropped his coin purse into one of the side pockets.
They bowed and said, “My lord.”
Zane gave a near silent chuckle of derision and shrugged uncomfortably into his coat. Being addressed as a title was going to take a bit of getting used to. Especially when it was coming from family.

From How to Train Your Earl by Amelia Grey. Copyright © 2021 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

Excerpt. ©Amelia Grey. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: 1 Print copy of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR EARL (US addresses only).

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Meet the Author:

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Amelia Grey read her first romance book when she was thirteen and she’s been a devoted reader of love stories ever since. Her awards include the Booksellers Best, Aspen Gold, and the Golden Quill. Writing as Gloria Dale Skinner, she won the coveted Romantic Times Award for Love and Laughter and the prestigious Maggie Award. Her books have sold to many countries in Europe, Indonesia, Turkey, Russia, and most recently to Japan. Several of her books have also been featured in Doubleday and Rhapsody Book Clubs. Amelia is the author of over twenty-five books, including the Heirs’ Club trilogy and the Rakes of St. James series. She’s been happily married to her high school sweetheart for over thirty-five years and she lives on the beautiful gulf coast of Northwest Florida.