The Red Hot Earl Read online

  The Red Hot Earl

  Darcy Burke

  Contents

  The Red Hot Earl

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Author Note

  Books by Darcy Burke

  The Jewels of Historical Romance

  About the Author

  The Red Hot Earl

  The Earl of Buckleigh was once an untitled misfit, tormented at Oxford. Now, he’s overcome his challenges and is eager for the future, especially when his oldest and dearest friend, Bianca, needs help to save the annual holiday party. Ash has a plan to rescue the event, but when the bullies from his youth are up to their old tricks, he must risk everything to put the past behind him and find true love.

  Furious when her brother refuses to host the St. Stephen’s Day party, Lady Bianca Stafford is committed to giving the villagers their celebration. In Ash, she sees salvation for their local tradition, and perhaps a future she never expected. But her brother has other plans for her—a Season and marriage, and not to Ash. When disaster strikes, everything she cares about is threatened and it will take a miracle—or a hero—to save the day.

  The Red Hot Earl is inspired by the song and story, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Be sure to check out the Red Hot Earl version of the song on my website at darcyburke.com!

  Don’t miss the rest of Love is All Around, a Regency Holiday Trilogy!

  The Gift of the Marquess arrives October 15, 2019 and Joy to the Duke will be here November 5, 2019!

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  Darcy’s Duchesses for historical readers

  Burke’s Book Lovers for contemporary readers

  The Red Hot Earl

  Copyright © 2019 Darcy Burke

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1944576657

  ISBN-13: 9781944576653

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Book design: © Darcy Burke.

  Book Cover Design © The Midnight Muse Designs.

  Cover image © Period Images and Deposit Photo.

  Darcy Burke Font Design © Carrie Divine/Seductive Designs

  Editing: Linda Ingmanson.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Created with Vellum

  For all the misfits

  Chapter 1

  County Durham, England

  November 1811

  “Come to Thornaby’s house party with me. Please.” Lady Bianca Stafford didn’t want to beg her brother, but she was close to doing so.

  Calder Stafford, the eighth Duke of Hartwell, pressed his lips into a thin white line, absolutely unmoved by her passionate pleas. “There is no reason for me to attend, nor do I have any desire.”

  Bianca walked around his desk, forcing him to turn his head to follow her movements. She stood next to his chair and gave him her most earnest stare. “There’s every reason. This is the start of the holiday season. It’s where the informal planning for the annual St. Stephen’s Day party happens. You must come.”

  He pinched the bridge of his aquiline nose. “Bianca, I am not going to host a St. Stephen’s Day party.”

  She couldn’t keep herself from gasping. “You can’t be serious. We always host the St. Stephen’s Day party.” It wasn’t a party, it was the party. The entire town came, and it was the very center of the Christmas season.

  He dropped his hand to the arm of his chair and stared up at her unblinking, his dark gray eyes as cold and unyielding as the nickname some still used for him: Chill. Because he’d been the Earl of Chilton his whole life. Until their father’s death seven months ago.

  Regret and sadness squeezed Bianca’s heart, because of the loss of their father and because of the vast breach between him and Calder that had never been healed.

  “I am not hosting it, and that is the end of it.” His tone was soft but sharp.

  She gaped at him, unable to find words for what seemed an eternity. “But, but—” she stuttered before snapping her lips closed at the distaste in her brother’s eyes. How he’d become such a remote, unfeeling person was beyond her. But then she’d rarely seen him the past ten years while he’d lived in London. He’d never come home, not once.

  Taking a deep breath, she sought to calm her racing heart and outraged mind. “Calder.” She used the name their sister Poppy had always called him. The name their mother, who had died a few days after giving birth to Bianca, had used, or so Poppy had told her. “You have a duty as the duke.”

  “I have many duties, and none of them include hosting a St. Stephen’s Day party.” He turned his attention back to his desk and the papers upon it. “Now, run along to your house party.”

  His condescending tone grated. She would go as soon as Poppy, who was the Marchioness of Darlington, arrived to act as her chaperone. “Your tenants adore the St. Stephen’s Day party. It is the highlight of their year. Surely that’s important.”

  He didn’t look up. “It is not.”

  Grumbling low in her throat, Bianca glared at her older brother’s bent head. “Papa would be disappointed. He’s likely spinning in his grave.”

  Silence was her answer, and so she turned and stalked from his study, not stopping until she nearly ran into Poppy in the entrance hall.

  “Goodness, you look as if you want to commit murder,” Poppy said, her gray-blue eyes wide. “Well, perhaps not murder. That’s rather gruesome.”

  “In this case, however, it’s accurate. I would cheerfully choke our brother if I could manage it.”

  Poppy exhaled. “Should I go and speak with him?”

  “You don’t even know why I wish to strangle him,” Bianca said.

  “I feel certain you will tell me.”

  “Yes, yes, I talk too much.” Bianca waved her hand. “In this case, I could talk until my tongue fell out, and I’m afraid it wouldn’t matter. Calder refuses to host the St. Stephen’s Day party.” Just saying it aloud deepened her anger.

  Poppy’s delicate dark brows arched high upon her forehead. “You found this surprising given his behavior the past six months since he returned?”

  “Yes.” But she shouldn’t have. Still, she’d hoped. “How can he not care about the tenants and how important that day is to them?” The day after Christmas, it was a time for everyone in and around the village of Hartwell and the estate of Hartwood to come together and celebrate, to cast off their cares and responsibilities and rejoice in fellowship and love.

  “The day can still be important. It will just be up to you to make it that way.” Poppy gave her a supportive smile. “I would offer to help, but…” Her voice faltered, and a shadow dashed through her eyes.

  Bianca reached for her sister’s gloved hand and gave it a squeeze. “I wouldn’t ask.” Poppy was going through a difficult t
ime, and it was more than enough that she’d consented to accompany Bianca to this three-day party at Thornhill, the Viscount Thornaby’s estate an hour away.

  “Thank you, darling,” Poppy said, squeezing her hand in return. “The footman is loading your luggage onto my coach. Are you ready?”

  “I am.” Bianca cast a sad look back toward their brother’s study. She still had time to change his mind. But not much.

  Her maid, Donnelly, entered the hall with Bianca’s accessories. When she’d donned her hat, cape, and gloves, they departed the house. The Darlington coach awaited them outside, Poppy’s maid ensconced within.

  Once they were on their way, Bianca turned toward her sister, her mind churning. “We’ll have to be careful not to reveal Calder’s hesitance to host the party. I don’t want anyone to know he was against it, even for a moment.”

  Poppy blinked at her, then pursed her lips. “Bianca, he is against it. And not just for a moment. He isn’t going to change his decision. You must let it go, unfortunately.”

  “I refuse. It’s tradition—the village of Hartwell will be devastated if it doesn’t go on as it has for the past… I don’t know how long.”

  “I’ve heard there has been a celebration of some kind since the first duke, even under Cromwell when it was forbidden to celebrate Christmas.” Poppy glanced out the window, a dark curl bobbing against her temple beneath the brim of her smart pine-green bonnet. “However, Calder is the duke now. It is up to him to continue the tradition. Or not.”

  Frustrated at her sister’s lack of outrage, Bianca stared at the passing landscape. The fields were hard and barren with the onset of winter, the hedges rich and green beneath the naked branches of the trees. Turning her head to look at her sister once more, she asked, “Aren’t you the least bit disappointed?”

  “Of course I am. But I am far more disappointed with other matters.” She looked out the window and murmured, “Never mind.”

  Bianca tamped down her irritation. Poppy had other concerns. “I apologize. This isn’t your worry. It’s mine.” And she’d ensure the party happened. She had to. Maybe Calder didn’t care about tradition or about spreading goodwill amongst the people of Hartwell and the retainers and tenants of Hartwood, but Bianca did.

  Several minutes passed before Poppy made a quiet observation. “I can see your mind working.”

  Bianca’s mouth tilted into a half smile in spite of herself. “Can you?”

  Poppy chuckled softly. “It never stops. And that is a compliment. Your ever-turning brain is what makes you Bianca.”

  It also made her unwed. Most gentlemen, it turned out, did not care for a wife with excessive opinions and a penchant for sharing them. Not that she’d spent much time concerning herself with finding a husband.

  At twenty-two, she was a tad overdue on the Marriage Mart, owing to her father’s illness the past few years. Beyond that, she had no desire to have a Season in London. She loved Hartwell and the surrounding area, and, if she had to marry—and she wasn’t certain she did—would much prefer to marry a local gentleman. The problem was that there weren’t very many of them who hadn’t gone off to war. There would be several at the house party, however, including Viscount Thornaby himself.

  She didn’t want to marry Thornaby or anyone else at this juncture, but perhaps he would be interested in taking up where Calder refused regarding the party. Thornhill was an hour by carriage, and even longer by foot, which made the location less than ideal, but if it was all she could find… Yes, she’d take the opportunity of this house party to devise a contingency plan. Just in case Calder proved exceptionally stubborn.

  Or coldhearted.

  She feared it was the latter. The brother who’d returned from London was not the brother she remembered from her youth. But then neither was her sister. She slid a look at Poppy. Faint lines pulled at her eyes and mouth as she gazed out the window, making her look slightly older than her twenty-four years. Bianca wished her sister would share more of her struggles, but she didn’t.

  Sometimes Bianca wondered if she wasn’t really from the same family as her older brother and sister. Both Calder and Poppy held their emotions close, while Bianca displayed hers for everyone to see. Papa had said she was just like her mother. How Bianca wished she could have known that for herself.

  Oh, this was turning into a melancholy day! Bianca straightened her shoulders and pressed her spine against the squab. It was nearly her favorite time of year—the time when people were more apt to share themselves and find joy. A time of peace and happiness.

  And she wouldn’t let Calder ruin it. The St. Stephen’s Day party would happen at Hartwood. She refused to accept anything else.

  * * *

  Standing in the drawing room of Thornhill, the Viscount Thornaby’s country home, Ashton Rutledge, Earl of Buckleigh, took a deep breath and counted to three. The exercise came easily after so many years, and he prayed it would work as well as it typically did. When he didn’t cough or grunt or angle his head, he knew it had, and he thanked heaven for it.

  He smiled blandly at his host, Thornaby. “Thank you for the invitation.”

  “Couldn’t ignore the new earl!” Thornaby chuckled, but it wasn’t jovial. Perhaps it was the way his gaze darted to his friends, Keldon and Moreley, or the underlying smirk teasing his thin lips.

  Ash swallowed the response he wanted to give—I’m sure you tried—and worked to focus on the future rather than the past. Perhaps they’d all grown up—as he had.

  “Must say you aren’t at all what I remembered,” Moreley said, sizing Ash up and seeming perplexed by what he saw.

  Ash could well imagine what Moreley and the others were thinking, that Ash scarcely resembled the scrawny boy who’d finished Oxford ahead of them ten years ago. “I would say the same of you,” Ash responded as he took in Moreley’s receding hairline, Keldon’s slight paunch, and Thornaby’s… what? He looked much the same. Still tall and angular, his nose long, and his eyes small and hungry.

  “Could you?” Keldon said, glancing at his friends. “We haven’t changed at all.” The others nodded and laughed amongst themselves as if they were sharing a jest that only the three of them were privy to.

  Well, that was discouraging. Change, Ash had long ago decided, was an excellent thing.

  Moreley sniffed. “Won’t lie to you. We miss Lyndon terribly.”

  Ash kept from scowling, both to keep from insulting the trio before him and because it wasn’t polite to think ill of the dead. But it was blessed hard not to think ill of the former earl, his morally bankrupt cousin. Ash heard his mother’s voice, a constant refrain in his youth: “We must pity poor Lyndon for he didn’t have the love and support you did. To be raised without a mother and with a cold, dispassionate father is a tragedy in and of itself.”

  It hadn’t made Lyndon’s abuse of Ash any easier to suffer.

  But that was the past, and Ash meant to concentrate on the future. No matter how difficult, especially here and now, when the past was in his face.

  “I’m sure Lyndon would rather he was here with you,” Ash said evenly.

  Thornaby snorted. “That’s bloody obvious.”

  “We will shoot tomorrow in his honor,” Moreley said, his voice lifting in tribute. He cast a pitying look toward Ash. “Too bad you can’t join in.”

  That had been true once, and Ash supposed it still was, in a way. “I can, however I choose not to.” He was new to the earldom, and hunting for sport was not something he’d ever done, nor was it something he particularly desired to learn. He could, contrary to their assumption, ride and shoot.

  Moreley’s dark gaze flickered with surprise, and he exchanged knowing glances with his friends before returning his attention to Ash. “You can remain here with the ladies. Perhaps they will allow you to play piquet.”

  Keldon snickered. “The perfect solution.”

  “Or you could arrange for me, and anyone else who prefers not to hunt, to ride,” Ash suggested smoothly,
looking toward his host.

  Unfortunately, the butler interrupted the conversation before Thornaby could respond.

  “Lady Darlington and Lady Bianca Stafford, my lord,” the butler said before stepping aside as the two women he’d announced moved into the drawing room.

  Though it had been years since he’d seen both ladies, Ash recognized them immediately. Lady Darlington was slightly taller with gray-blue eyes that assessed her surroundings and a reserved demeanor evidenced in her stiff, compact stance with her hands clasped together at her waist.

  Lady Bianca, on the other hand, seemed to brim with enthusiasm. She took a step toward them, her bright blue eyes sparkling with curiosity and verve. Though small, she seemed a mass of tightly controlled energy, her legs slightly parted, her hands at her sides as if she might sprint forward at any moment. Dark curls framed her heart-shaped face.

  Thornaby bowed. “Welcome to Thornhill, Lady Darlington, Lady Bianca.”

  The other gentlemen bowed and murmured a welcome. Ash stepped toward the marchioness and offered his leg. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Lady Darlington.” Then he turned and gave the same bow to her younger sister. “Lady Bianca.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t—” Whatever Lady Darlington had been about to say was cut off by Keldon.

  “This is the new Earl of Buckleigh,” Keldon said. “He was Lyndon’s cousin. Surely you remember the red hair.”