The Lady’s No Angel by Emma V Leech

To claim her inheritance, she must risk everything—especially her heart.
Angelica “Angel” Everdene was born with pirate blood and a wicked streak to match. When her dying grandfather—Black Jack Baxter, the most notorious privateer to ever charm a tavern and gut a ship—refuses to leave her spendthrift parents another penny, he offers Angel an inheritance of her own… with one deliciously cruel condition: she must claim it alone, or lose it forever.

The only clue lies with Jenny Preston—a dead woman with a legend stitched to her name, and a grave said to hide Black Jack’s buried treasure. Disguised as a respectable lady travelling with a maid and an orphaned boy for propriety, Angel heads for Eynsford and straight into trouble. When her carriage sinks to its axles in mud, salvation arrives in the form of a broad-shouldered saviour with soldier’s hands and a nobleman’s arrogance—Leo Cleaver.

As miles slip away and secrets unravel, Angel’s quest turns into a game of lies, late-night confessions, and heat she can’t afford to indulge—because Leo isn’t who he claims to be. When their search for Jenny Preston’s grave gets them hauled in for grave-robbing, Angel finds herself facing a powerful duke… and the truth about the man who’s been looking at her like she’s already his.

To win her grandfather’s fortune, Angel must outwit the past and claim the treasure before it claims her. To keep the man who’s set her skin on fire, she’ll have to decide whether surrender is the greatest risk of all… or the sweetest.

Tropes: road-trip adventure, hidden identity, forced proximity, spirited heroine, spicy open-door historical romance, buried treasure.