Deborah Hale is one of my most reliable historical romance authors - she regularly delivers a great story and good characters (I love her heroes). The Earl's Honorable Intentions is a nice little read, and if you are not generally of the audience who reads from the "Love Inspired" category I would also say that nuances in the novel that put it in that category are not intrusive at all. (I am not a regular Love Inspired reader, but will follow Deborah Hale pretty much wherever she goes).
This book is set around the Napoleonic Wars, and the hero, Gavin Romney, is one of it's many victims, physically and psychologically. Hannah Fletcher, his children's governess, is challenged with breaking through Gavin's sense of failure - as a soldier, a father and a husband, but in the process must struggle with her own sense of abandonment and failures from when she was a child. The story is an intimate one, focusing mostly on the hero and heroine, and their chemistry is very good.
I did struggle a little bit with the heroine in this book - which is why this is a three and not a four star review. Hannah's internal conflict, which drove relationship with the Earl and his eldest son, was hard for me to identify with. There were just times she felt a little clingy, or something, but I am sure it's because I was having a hard time connecting with her backstory. At the end of the book the author said she struggled a bit with parts of this book and I wonder if this was it.
That being said, I still thought it was a fine read, a gentle romance (which I have a soft spot for) and well worth a look by anyone who enjoys regency romances.