High Seas to High Society by Sophia James

Emma Seaton has come to London for the specific purpose of finding Asher Wellingham, Duke of Carisbrooke. When he finally appears at the ball she is attending, she contrives to tumble straight into his arms, slipping on the polished floor and due to a shoe buckle she has carefully loosened beforehand. She seeks a treasure map that once belonged to her father, a pirate, which he had carefully rolled up and hidden in a secret compartment in his cane.

When Wellingham killed her father, he took the cane as a prize, not knowing what it contained. Now, she has come to retrieve it, but she's finding herself attracted to Asher, a complication she cannot afford. He, too, finds Emma intriguing, but knowing that she set up the meeting with him, he also finds himself wondering why she would go to such lengths to meet with him.

But he has his own reasons for hating pirates, as his brother attempted to rescue him when Asher was imprisoned by pirates... Emma's father, in fact, and lost his sight when they were marooned in the jungle for months. It was this that led him to destroy her father. But he little knows that Emma was the supposed "Cabin boy" who helped him escape the first time he was imprisoned.

Thrown together with Asher, Emma finds her heart engaged, and her reason and need for vengeance falling fast to love and passion. But will Asher hate her when he finds out who she really is? And will his family, his brother included, accept her into their fold when they learn her true background and motives? Which will prevail, love or the need for revenge? Well, this is a romance novel after all, what do you think?

This was an okay book, which I really picked up because of the cover art that depicts Asher as looking very like Ioan Gruffydd from "Horatio Hornblower". It was only okay in that I didn't really get very into the story and felt detatched rather than invested in the main characters and their wants and needs. So I don't have much to say about it either way, positive or negative. Again, an okay book, but nothing special.