Spotlight & Giveaway: Ne’er Duke Well by Alexandra Vasti

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Alexandra Vasti to HJ!

Hi Alexandra and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Ne’er Duke Well!

Hello! Thanks so much for having me!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Ne’er Duke Well is about Peter Kent, a radical American upstart who unexpectedly becomes a duke. In order to gain custodianship of his siblings, he must marry respectably—so for help, he turns to capable Lady Selina Ravenscroft. But disaster strikes when sparks fly between Peter and Selina—because Selina secretly runs an erotic library for women and is definitely not a suitable bride.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

I’ve always been fond of a love declaration that doesn’t include the words “I love you”! So here’s Peter’s:
“You bring the morning with you. You’re the light, sweetheart. When you walk into a room, I can’t see the shadows.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Selina runs an erotic circulating library called Belvoir’s, so naturally I talk about sexy 19th-century books quite a bit. And every single book that I discuss in Ne’er Duke Well is a REAL historical text! I learned so much about the variety of things people were into in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Wilder than you’d think!)
• The audiobook is narrated by my favorite narrator, Mhairi Morrison, who makes everything so charming and hilarious. I am thrilled that so many readers will first encounter my work through Mhairi’s brilliant performance!
• The inspiration for the book came in the form of my heroine, Selina Ravenscroft. I had a very clear sense of this prickly, capable woman, determined to fix the way that her society kept young women in ignorance. I was also thinking a lot about book banning and how important it is for young people to be able to access information about sex, gender, and sexuality.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Peter is initially drawn to Selina because he’s impressed by how clever and capable she is. He sees her manage her surroundings—rescuing puppies, hiding a nervous debutante in a potted plant—and thinks she’s the perfect person to help him with his legal tangle. He’s only a tiny bit devastated when she decides to marry him off—to someone else!

Selina is secretly—though she would never admit it—terrified of Peter. She senses immediately that he has the ability to upset her carefully controlled world. Unfortunately, she’s also wildly attracted to him, and she loves how courageous and caring he is.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I absolutely loved writing their first kiss scene! Selina decides that Peter needs to practice his courting skills, because match-making isn’t going well—and so she tells him to practice on her. This is a challenge that Peter can’t resist!

 

He took a step toward her. She held her ground, and damn him, he liked that about her.

“I respect you,” he said, his voice low. She swayed toward him, and he took another step. “I value you. I’ve never met anyone like you.”

She licked her lips, and he brought his hand to the side of her long, slender neck, his thumb just brushing the skin behind her ear.

Alarms were sounding in his head, shrieking, Stop talking and Back away and She’s not for you, you ass.

He ignored it all, and savored the impossible softness of her skin.

“I think about you. All the time. Even when I shouldn’t think of you, I do.” Blood was roaring in his ears now, pounding through his body, but he made himself be easy, let his thumb explore her racing pulse.

Her lips trembled apart, but she didn’t speak, so he kept going. He couldn’t have made himself stop.

“I am so glad I know you,” he said. “You are so clever. So damned sweet. I can’t stop wondering what it is that you smell of. I dream about how you would taste. And Christ, Selina, I want to taste every part of you.”

Her lips came back together, pressed into a pout, and he realized it was the start of a little plosive P. She was going to say his name. She was going to tell him to stop being such a damned fool.

And so instead of letting her finish, he caught that pout with his own mouth and kissed her.

Readers should read this book….

If they like kind, complicated protagonists who love really hard! And also if they like romances that are sexy AND make them laugh.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

My next book, Earl Crush, comes out on January 21, 2025. It’s the story of Lydia Hope-Wallace, one of the side characters from Ne’er Duke Well. She’s a wallflower heiress who’s secretly been corresponding with an impoverished earl for the past few years, and the book begins when she shows up on his doorstep and proposes marriage. Only it turns out that his brother has been catfishing her for the past few years, and the real earl has no idea who she is.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Print copy of NE’ER DUKE WELL, US & Canada only

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Excerpt from Ne’er Duke Well:

Peter wanted to talk to Selina Ravenscroft.

That, as much as he couldn’t say it aloud to Tagore, was the reason they were going to Rowland House. At Brooks’s, Selina wouldn’t be there. At a ball, he couldn’t lay his cards on the table in front of her and watch her clever, busy mind puzzle away at the problem.

In the two years since he’d met her, he’d seen her at work a number of times. She distracted maidenly aunts to help facilitate unchaperoned marriage proposals. She rearranged conversational groups, murmuring in response to his curious glance, “Lady Stratton can’t abide the Earl of Puddington. I’d hate to see fisticuffs ruin my aunt’s party.”

He’d seen her identify a fragile dowager missing a glove from across a crowded room and produce a new glove as if from nowhere.

Once, at the Breightmets’, he’d seen her thrust her friend Lydia Hope-Wallace into a potted palm. He’d watched with interest as Lydia had cast up her accounts, hidden from all passersby, and then stood by in frank amazement as Selina somehow managed to remove Lydia from the ball without a single other person seeming to notice their departure.

She was so damned efficient. She seemed like she could be in two places at once. She could light up the room like the most popular woman of the beau monde, but he’d also seen her fade into the background when she chose to. Though how she managed that, he had no idea, what with her acres of honey-blond hair and that wide, expressive mouth.

And her eyes, light amber, like a cat’s eyes, or a wolf’s. He’d thought about those eyes from time to time these last two years.

Not as often, though, as he’d thought about how infernally clever she was, and how much he liked that about her. She fixed things, like her brother—but not in his same way. Rowland was a politician, all careful talk and social grace and terrifying ethical code. Selina wasn’t afraid to sneak about, to hide in a potted plant or steal a glove if she had to.

And when he’d seen the way Lu had warmed to her, and the way Selina had known instinctively how to win Lu’s confidence, it had occurred to him suddenly that if anyone might have a fresh thought about how he could gain custody of his siblings, it would be Selina Ravenscroft.

He was still thinking about her when they arrived at the Duke of Rowland’s house.

The butler ushered them inside and set out to determine if His Grace was receiving callers.

“And Lady Selina,” Peter added. “I’d like to see His Grace and Lady Selina.”

He felt rather than saw Tagore’s sharp dark-eyed gaze.

Like a penknife, that look.

“Social call, is it?” said Tagore blandly.

“No,” Peter said. “No. Have you met Lady Selina?”

“I have not had the pleasure. Rowland’s sister?”

“That’s right. When you meet her, you’ll see why I want her here as well.”

Tagore snorted. “I’m sure I will.”

Peter ignored him, and the butler returned to deliver them into a drawing room decorated in blues and creams. In the corner of the room, rising to her feet from a leather armchair, was Selina.

Today she wore demure white, and there was no trace of the immense green thing she’d had on her head when he’d met her on Bond Street. He couldn’t quite say whether he missed it—he’d rather admired the way she had worn it, all defiance, as if it were a crown and not a hat the size of a barque. Her gloves were neatly buttoned at her wrists, and she gave him the politest of curtsies as he greeted her. Her eyes were downcast, and for just a moment he doubted this whole damned thing.

Then she looked up, and that fierce tawny gaze caught his, and he knew down to his bones that he’d been right to think of her.

And he had the strangest thought then: that he’d been right every time he’d thought of her. That every time she had crossed his mind—her keen wit and her capable manner and even, if he were being honest with himself, the plump curve of her mouth and the tender spot at the nape of her neck—every time, it had been right. That she belonged exactly there, inside his head.

Which was ridiculous, even for him.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

In this steamy Regency romp, Lady Selina is determined to find the Duke of Stanhope the perfect wife—the only problem is she’s starting to think that might be her.

Peter Kent—newly inherited Duke of Stanhope and recently of New Orleans, Louisiana—must become respectable. Between his radical politics and the time he interrupted a minor royal wedding with a flock of sheep—not his fault!—he’s developed a scandalous reputation at odds with his goal of becoming guardian to his half siblings. For help, he turns to the cleverest and most managing woman of his acquaintance, Lady Selina Ravenscroft.

Selina is society’s most proper debutante, save one tiny secret: she runs an erotic circulating library for women. When Peter asks for her help, she suggests courtship and marriage to a lady of unimpeachable reputation. (Which is to say, definitely not herself.)

But matchmaking doesn’t go according to plan. Peter’s siblings run rampant on Bond Street. Selina ends up in the Serpentine. And worst of all, the scorching chemistry between Peter and Selina proves impossible to resist. For the disreputable duke and his unpredictable matchmaker, falling in love just might be the ultimate scandal.
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Meet the Author:

Alexandra Vasti is a British literature professor by day and historical romance writer by night. After finishing her PhD at Columbia University in 2019, she moved to New Orleans, where she lives with her large and very noisy family. Her books have been featured in NPR, The Cut, Oprah Daily, and elsewhere.
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