JeanzBookReadNReview: BLOG TOUR – A TROPICAL REBEL GETS THE DUKE BY ADRIANA HERRERA

BLURB
Aurora Montalban Wright has had a whirlwind summer in Paris but is finally settling down to the business she came to do: run an underground women’s clinic. This venture is risky, not only because she’s technically breaking the law, but because she is providing services to the daughters, wives and mistresses of powerful men who could get her into a lot of trouble.

When she finds herself in danger, Apollo Sinclair Robles, the new Duke of Annan, offers his assistance, even though she despises him (or wants to despise him – that doesn’t stop the several dalliances they have with one another). But he has many secrets of his own. He’s still grappling with his newfound place in the British aristocracy, especially as a Black man. Now he is part of a world he despises with more than a few enemies waiting for any opportunity to disgrace him.

He should be focusing on finding a bride that can help him further his causes and leverage himself withing the highest echelons of power, but instead he’s distracted with keeping Aurora Montalban safe. Aurora has been cut off from her family and has been living modestly for months. Once Apollo realizes the risks she’s been taking with her clinics, he makes it his business to protect her. The woman is relentless in her endeavor to help women in need, even when it means putting herself at risk. Their closeness leads to discovering new sides to Aurora, and the more he learns about her the more he’s convinced she’s the perfect woman for him. But her past is complicated and having her as his duchess would make his bid for power more difficult.

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EXCERPT 

Prologue

July
1889

Paris,
France

Aurora Montalban Wright was no rebel.

At least that was what most who knew her
would say. It was not an unfair assessment of her character. After all, true
rebels never bothered with consequences, not when a glorious mission lay in the
balance. No one would label Aurora a carefree sort, and that was fine by her.
Because what she’d learned early in life was that rebellions cost blood, sweat
and tears, and she had none of those to spare. This, of course, did not mean
she was above bending a rule—or five—if the situation called for it.

In fact, twice in her past, she’d broken
every rule set before her in order to escape her circumstances. Once,
humiliatingly, for a man—which came to a disastrous end. The other—equally
catastrophic—for her freedom. Despite this, Aurora was not rebellious by
nature. It was simply that she was galvanized by the word no. The more she was
told she could not do something, the more creative she became at conquering it.

No, Aurora was no rebel, but tonight she
felt like one. The worst possible news had come at the worst possible time and
she desperately wanted a distraction. In fact, she wanted far more than that,
she needed the kind of oblivion that only came from terrible decisions.
Thankfully she was in a city where immoral diversions were easy enough to
procure, if one knew which objectionable doors to darken.

Her destination, the clandestine apartment
of Apollo César Sinclair Robles—a man who’d just claimed his place as the heir
to a dukedom by destroying his own father—could be considered a particularly
ill-advised one.

As her fiacre came to a stop on the Rue de
Volney, she fleetingly considered if there weren’t less potentially disastrous
ways to deal with her current mood. Then she felt the weight of the key she’d
kept in her pocket for weeks and decided there definitely were, but she still
wanted to do this.

The building looked exactly as she
remembered from the night she’d spent here a month earlier. It was one of those
modern, luxury apartment buildings near the Parc Monceau, kept by wealthy
aristocrats and business titans to commit their more slanderous peccadillos in
decadent discretion.

When she reached the door, she took a
moment to examine herself in the sparkling glass window. The walking suit she’d
donned that morning showed the strain of the day. Her face was framed with
wisps of loose curls that had escaped the braid pinned to the nape of her neck.
Her hat was a bit more askew than what was fashionable and there was a stain on
her left cuff she could not quite identify and was reluctant to smell.

She ought to go home, clean herself up and
come another day.

She wasn’t presentable and she was
certainly not in a state of mind to interact with someone who had a natural
gift for trying her patience. Coming to Apollo for what she needed tonight was
the furthest from sensible she’d been in a long time.

The thought sent a flash of alarm through
her body. She decidedly ignored the cardiovascular admonition.

Undeterred, she pushed the door open and
strode right up to the porter with the key dangling from her hand and her heart
making another valiant effort at warning her off.

“Oui, madame.” The porter greeted her with
the detached politeness of someone too well trained to openly scowl at her
clothes, but too French not to appear at least marginally aggrieved at their
deplorable state.

“Lord Darnick.” The two words did the
trick, and with a nod, he stepped aside and directed her toward the lift
operator, who was already pushing buttons.

Clearly, women coming to see his lordship
at all hours of the night was a regular occurrence. Not exactly a surprise.
From the moment she’d met the man at a soiree months earlier, he’d been an
unapologetic reprobate. She’d never encountered anyone who cared less about
other people’s opinions than Apollo César Sinclair Robles.

The evidence of that lay in the way he’d
arrived in Edinburgh like a dark avenging angel and exposed his father as a
liar and a thief. Upending in a single night, one of the oldest dukedoms in
Britain while establishing himself as its rightful heir, leaving the peerage
reeling, and his own father a social pariah.

He was arrogant, rude, and blatantly
ridiculed the societal norms she’d so carefully ascribed to. From that first
meeting, she’d found herself equally appalled and intrigued by him.

A smile tugged at her lips at the thought
of what the new Earl of Darnick would do when she turned up at his apartment
and told him she was there for sex, and the more depraved, the better.

He would probably think she was out of her
mind.

Out of her mind or not, she had it made up,
and whatever lapse this was, she would deal with it in the morning. Four steps
forward and two firm knocks were all it took for her, a respected physician, to
announce herself at a man’s tryst apartment somewhere between one and two in
the morning.

Her heartbeat marked hurried footsteps on
the other side, while she took in slow, calming breaths. The moment the door
finally opened, it was suddenly very clear that she had not properly prepared
herself. The rapid escalation of her pulse told the story.

He looked like the very last stop on the
train to ruination. All languid grace, and the ease of a man who was well aware
of the damage he could do on a woman’s good sense with a mere wink and a smile.

Aurora, to her eternal shame was not immune
to either.

“Bella Doctora, I didn’t know you made
house calls.” He spoke in that lazy drawl he always used with her, but there
was an alertness to his gaze that betrayed his indifference.

“Don’t call me that,” she rebuked, then
remembered she was here to ask for something and tempered her manner with what
she hoped was a comely smile. “I came to return your key.” She held it up as
she endeavored, and failed, not to gape at the triangle of bronzed, muscled
chest. She didn’t dare look below his sternum lest she encountered bare
forearms and swooned before she could tell the man what she was about.

“My key,” he drawled, without reaching for
it. “After more than a month, you’ve decided to deliver it at one in the
morning, on a Tuesday.” He’d given it to her on the night he’d brought her
here, after her friend Manuela’s wedding day devolved into a scandal that had
all of Paris talking for weeks. She hadn’t seen him since.

“I was looking in on a patient close by,”
she retorted, truthfully, dropping the key into the pocket of his dressing
gown. The other truth she failed to disclose was that she’d kept the damned key
in her pocket like some kind of talisman since he’d given it to her.

“Ah yes, Doctora Montalban and her causes.”
His voice dripped with cynicism, as if it amused him that she considered her
profession anything serious.

“Why is it that every time you call me that
it feels like an insult?”

“That might have more to do with you than
with me.”

It irked her that his barbs always hit
their targets. She’d made an art of letting men’s opinions roll off her back,
not a difficult task, since a significant number of men she encountered were
imbeciles. But not this earl, not the man who’d ambushed the British
aristocracy like Simón Bolívar did with the Spanish at Boyacá.

She wished that diabolical grin of his
didn’t start a sizzle under her skin. “Are you going to invite me in?”

He cocked a thick, dark eyebrow at whatever
he heard in her tone, but instead of inviting her inside, he braced a large
hand on the top corner of the doorjamb, until his very distracting mouth was
close enough to kiss. She swallowed audibly when she caught a glimpse of the
corded muscle of his forearm, thick veins and dusting of dark hair. Her
salivary glands seemed to run out of fluid just then.

“First you have to tell me what you’re
really here for, Doctora.” He was showing off his size for her and it was
fruitless to pretend it had no effect on her. Everything about the man eroded
every preservation instinct she had.

For over ten years, she’d avoided any
scenario that could place her in a vulnerable position. She’d practically
forgotten that under her walking suits lived a woman with very real urges and
burning desires. Until this man had crossed her path. Since then, he’d been
like a toothache. Making himself known, throbbing, gnawing at her, until she’d
had to do something about it.

His closeness sent her blood from a canter
to a gallop, and her breaths became shorter, more erratic. The undeniable
biological evidence of arousal and desire. She might as well get on with it.
She locked her own gaze with the new Earl of Darnick’s, took a breath and
leaned in.

“I came here for sexual intercourse, Lord
Darnick.” It was gratifying to see his predatory gaze replaced by genuine
shock. But as expected with a hunter, he recovered quickly.

“Well, in that case, do come in, Doctora
Montalban,” he told her with a wave of his hand before stepping aside.

She decided to ignore the sarcasm in his
voice and walked into the apartment.

The moment she stepped inside, she was once
again surprised by how different this place was to what she envisioned for
Apollo’s lair. Instead of a showroom full of ostentatious furniture and
excessive gilt, what she found was a comfortable, unpretentious room. He had an
impressive collection of books. One of which was sitting open on the armrest of
a chair by the fire, next to a tumbler of amber liquid. He also collected art,
which to her astonishment were tasteful and interesting.

He was rich, handsome, well-read and had an
uncanny eye for art. Not that any of it mattered, to her. She was not here for
a marriage proposal, she off from the door and taking a few steps toward her
place by the bookshelf. “Let’s reserve the endearments for later and see what
we can do about all these clothes you’re wearing.”

“What?” She sounded like a dolt. This was
what she’d told him she wanted. What did she expect after propositioning a
scoundrel? Sweet nothings in her ear, passionate declarations?

“Your clothes, sweetheart.” He wiggled two
fingers somewhere in the vicinity of her chest. “The infernally unending layers
of fabric you insist on wearing. They give a man a devil of a time surmising
what you’ve got under all that wool and linen.” He made a face, and her mouth
twitched. Of all the things to fluster the wicked Earl of Darnick.

She took another look at him, those winged
cheekbones, skin like the most perfect caramel, and the umber curls, which made
her think of days in bed and rumpled, sweat-soaked sheets. It was a face a
woman could ruin her life over. It was a good thing she’d already done that
once and had no intention of ever doing it again.

“This is just for tonight.” It needed to be
said, but he remained unbothered.

“That you don’t need to worry about,
sweetheart.” He lifted a shoulder, his gaze still suspended somewhere below her
neck. “I’ve never had much craving for seconds.”

She shrugged and looked away, what more was
there to say to that?

“I’d appreciate it if this stayed between
us.”

“Keeping secrets from your pride, are you?”
he asked in a mocking tone. He was referring to her two dearest friends. The
friends with which she arrived here in Paris four months earlier: Luz Alana and
Manuela. The only two people in the world who knew every one of her secrets,
except for this one now, she thought grimly.

“My dear sister-in-law will be scandalized
to know you’ve come to me in your hour of need.” Of all the unlikely twists of
fate the last few months in Paris had yielded, Luz Alana finding a love match
with a Scottish whisky distiller, who turned out to be an earl and Apollo’s
half-brother, had been one of the most surprising.

“It is not like you’re the Marquis de Sade,
you’re just convenient.” He laughed again and this time it reached his eyes.
“Besides, Luz Alana and Manuela have their own lives.”

“True love is miraculous.” For her friends,
it seemed to be. She’d seen enough people entrapped into those cageless prisons
of duty and guilt to have any use for the sentiment.

But even she had to admit, Luz Alana and
Manuela seemed to have found partners worthy of their devotion. She was glad
for them, but that was not what she searched for.

Her friends believed in love worth any
sacrifice. That soulmates and fairy tales were possible. Aurora did not. Not
for herself, at least. She was too…marked. Too jaded to ever believe in the
lies of the heart.

Love, for her, had only ever served to
remind her of the ways she never quite measured up, how hard it was for her to
inspire that sentiment in another, and she would never again risk her freedom
for that chimera. She had a feeling Apollo César Sinclair Robles, in this at
least, was a kindred spirit.

“Why are you really here, Doctora?” Apollo
asked, taking another step in her direction. He was merely a couple of feet
away now. From this distance she could see that his lips had a pink tint to
them. She allowed herself the distraction of that perfect mouth for a moment as
she considered his question.

She could confess that this very evening
she’d received a letter from her brothers informing her they’d suspended her
ability to withdraw funds from her trust. She could tell him she’d been using
those funds to operate a clandestine clinic that helped women in a certain kind
of trouble. She could even say that the friend who delivered the correspondence
had seen the man who’d ruined Aurora at the of age fifteen aboard a steamer
headed to France. She might even admit that the possibility of running into the
villain of her past made her so sick with dread and shame she’d run here, to
Apollo. To ruin herself again, by choice, this time. But none of those pitiful
confessions would be conducive to what she’d come here for, not comfort or
solace, but escape.

“Let’s just say I’m in a fairly destructive
mood,” she declared, looking at him square in the eyes. “I would very much like
to do something utterly ruinous and you were the first thing that came to
mind.”

Excerpted
from A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera. Copyright © 2025 by Adriana
Herrera. Published by Canary Street Press.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

USA TODAY bestselling author Adriana Herrera was born and raised in the Caribbean, but for the
last fifteen years has let her job (and her spouse) take her all over the
world. She loves writing stories about people who look and sound like her
people getting unapologetic happy endings. Her books have received starred
reviews from PW and Booklist and have been featured on The TODAY Show and NPR,
in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Adriana is
an outspoken advocate for diversity in romance and was one of the co-creators of
the Queer Romance PoC Collective.