Peter Kent is new to London. He inherited his late father’s home and title, and now he’s the Duke of Stanhope and needing to become a respected member of society. Born and raised in New Orleans, he doesn’t stand on propriety much. But he has a younger half-brother and half-sister, and he is hoping to become their legal guardian. He needs the family court in England to allow him to take the kids in, so he can keep them safe and raise them with love and good humor.

Lady Selina Ravenscroft has a soft spot for the new duke. She thinks highly of how he’s passionately against slavery and willing to speak up about that, and she likes that he wants to take in his siblings and raise them himself. She understands it would easier for him to get custody if he had a wife. And while she is find of him, she cannot be the one to marry him. Because Lady Selina has a secret that could ruin them all if she were.

Selina puts together a short list of distinguished women who would all help ease Peter’s way into London society. He meets with them all, and after not only getting to know them all but heling to rescue a small dog that was stuck in the water, he has made his choice. The Duke of Stanhope wishes to marry . . . Lady Selina Ravenscroft.

She refuses because she has been running a library of scandalous books geared towards women. Lady Selina knew of a woman who had gotten pregnant without knowing how it had happened, and she realized that women were woefully unprepared for relationships and wanted to do something about that. Her patrons are discreet about the books they borrow from the library, but no secret is safe forever. Selina knows that at some point, some of the more self-righteous in society could come after her for her library, and she will be forced to leave London in shame. She has a contingency plan already in place.

But what she doesn’t have a plan for is how to deal with the fact that she is falling quite hard for the Duke of Stanhope. Peter is turning out to be intelligent, funny, charming, and very attractive. Selina finds herself jealous of the women she tried to set him up with. Although she needn’t be. The Duke only has eyes for her.

How will they resolve their feelings for each other, while trying to make the duke more respectable and keeping Lady Selina from being the center of a huge scandal, all while keeping the duke’s half-siblings safe? Is there a world where a London Lady and an American Duke can find love, or will everything collapse around them?

Ne’er Duke Well is a steamy Regency romance where love and logic compete. Both Peter and Selina are strong characters and devoted to their purpose in life, but those purposes seem to keep them apart. As their attraction grows, so does the heat, and the scenes in this book could put any of those titles in Selina’s secret library to shame. But there is also a lot of heart and humor as these lovers try to make the world a better place.

I listened to the audio book of Ne’er Duke Well, and I thought narrator Mhairi Morrison added a lot of texture to these character’s insights. She brought the voices of Peter and Selina to life through their arguments and bed sports, and made this a very enjoyable listen. I did think that her narration was a touch slow, which fits with the duke’s New Orleans background, but I did speed up the narration just a little so it wasn’t quite so languid to listen to. But I think that’s a personal choice, and it was lovely at normal speed also. I was really happy with Ne’er Duke Well. I thought it balanced important subjects with humor and brought the heat to this charming summer read.

A copy of the audio book for Ne’er Duke Well was provided by Dreamscape Media, and egalleys were provided by St. Martin’s Griffin, both through NetGalley, with many thanks.