I’m not someone who specifically seeks out Christmas-themed books to read around this time of year, but I’ve had this on my TBR pile for a while now, and it caught my eye when I was scrolling through my Kindle looking for my next read – so I thought, “why not?”

A Christmas Promise pushes two of my favourite buttons – the arranged marriage and a nice dollop of angst before we get to the HEA – as our two protagonists, an impoverished earl and the daughter of a wealthy coal merchant, enter into a hasty marriage and seem determined to make the worst of it.

Randolph Pierce, Earl of Falloden has recently inherited his title and encumbered estates from a dissolute cousin and needs money desperately if he is to be able to maintain his family home of Grenfell Park. He has been urged to sell the estate in order to pay off the debts, but he has an affection for the place, having spent his childhood there, and he does not wish to sell.

Eleanor Transome’s father, Joseph, is a self-made man, wealthier than many of the ton but despised by them for his lowly origins and cruelly labelled a cit. He is dying, and wants to ensure that his beloved daughter will be cared for after his death, so he sets himself to finding a husband for her. Having decided that Lord Falloden will be a good choice, he beards the earl in his London home to propose the match.

While annoyed at Transome’s presumption, Falloden knows he has little alternative but to agree if he is to remain solvent, and the pair are married within a few days. Their first meeting did not go well, leaving both with a poor opinion of the other, and these impressions are compounded during the early days of their marriage.

Randolph believes Eleanor to be nothing but a cold-hearted, social-climber while the new countess believes her husband to be a profligate snob; and they make no bones about making those opinions very clear to each other.

When Eleanor is told (erroneously, in fact) that her husband is keeping a mistress, she decides to exact her revenge in a way she thinks will upset him the most, and invites her entire family to Grenfell Park for Christmas, believing Falloden will find them loud and vulgar. Her family – consisting of numerous uncles, aunts, cousins and offspring – has always been close and they have always spent Christmas together. Her father’s dying wish was that Eleanor not mourn too long and that she made sure she had a very happy Christmas – for him – and she is determined to honour that wish.

Although he is somewhat surprised to discover just how many of his wife’s relatives will be joining them over the festive season, Randolph retains his composure – having already realised that that is one of the best ways to annoy his wife. But when the family appears, he very quickly finds that he enjoys their boisterous company, and that he is envious of the way they can act spontaneously, and find enjoyment in the simplest of things. All his life, he has been conscious of his position as the scion of a noble family, and it emerges that his boyhood Christmases were rather dull, with Christmas Day coming and going much as any other day of the year. (Can I get a Bah! Humbug! for Randolph’s starchy grandmother?!)

But now, his home is filled with laughter and love and light – and he likes it.

While everyone throws themselves into getting the house ready for Christmas, Randolph and Eleanor are starting to see each other differently. While I can agree with others that perhaps Eleanor held on to her misconceptions about her husband for too long, I can also see why she was doing it. It’s clear to the reader that her supposed coldness has nothing to do with a lack of emotion and everything to do with the fact that she feels things deeply, and had no wish to display her true emotions in front of the stranger she was expected to marry. Her natural reaction to feeling embarrassed or hurt is to stand her ground and lash out – and she continues to do this long after Randolph has realised that he wants to make a go of their marriage, throwing his tentative overtures back into his face.

But she has started to admit to herself that her opinions about her husband’s snobbery and profligacy are wrong, and that she yearns for tenderness from him. There’s a lovely, angsty scene when he’s about to take her to bed where her internal voice is almost screaming at her to ask for more than an emotionless sexual act, but she just can’t do it. Her inner defence mechanisms are so strong that she can’t let them down, and while on the one hand, I was frustrated by her pig-headedness in continuing to think the worst of Randolph, on the other I felt sorry for her because she was so paralysed by her fears as not to be able to ask for or enjoy such essential, human requirements – comfort and affection.

The misconstrued – and misconstruing – spouses do, of course, come to a better understanding of one another, in a way that is both emotionally satisfying and very naturalistic. The writing is gorgeous; the characterisation all round is fantastic and the love scenes, while not at all explicit, are hot, serving to remind yet again that in the hands of a truly skilled author, less can be more.

This is one of those books in which Christmas actually plays a key role, rather than just being there in the title as a marketing ploy for a story that could have taken place at any time of the year. There’s much to celebrate for the wonderful Transome family, even as they deal with the loss of a beloved brother, uncle and father; and for Eleanor and Randolph, there’s a new beginning and a promising future. It’s a truly heart-warming read for any time of the year, but I think it’s best savoured on a cold winters’ evening with a steaming cuppa and your favourite chocolates! And maybe a few tissues on hand, just in case.