Desert Island Duke — Sneak Peek
(Ruthless Rivals #4)
Chapter 1.
Lady Caroline Montgomery glared at the body farther down the beach and let out a snort of aggravation. Five minutes ago, she’d thought being shipwrecked alone on a tropical island was the worst thing that could have happened to her.
She’d been wrong. So wrong.
Being shipwrecked alone would have been delightful—in comparison. She was clever, resourceful, and accustomed to challenging situations such as this. Alone, she would have been fine.
Fate, however, hadn’t granted her that small mercy. Not content with sending a typhoon to wreck the Artemis and separate her from her beloved family, the cruel universe had saddled her with him.
Maximillian Cavendish.
His Grace, the fourteenth Duke of Hayworth.
The most infuriating man on seven continents and the very last creature Caro would have chosen as a fellow survivor—including the Artemis’s pig, which she’d affectionately named The Duke of Pork.
Hayworth lay on his side, his face turned away from her, but there was no mistaking his dark, tousled hair or those improbably broad shoulders. For such an indolent scoundrel, he had a remarkably healthy physique.
Caro stomped toward him along the sand, her damp skirts hampering her strides, and tried to squash the tiny kernel of panic at the stillness of his giant frame.
“You’d better not be dead,” she panted crossly.
He didn’t move when her shadow fell across his face, so she prodded him, none too gently, with the toe of her boot. “Hayworth? Are you dead?”
He wasn’t. She could see his shoulder rising and falling as he breathed, and a knot of something she refused to label as relief loosened inside her. She told herself it was because she didn’t want to be saddled with a corpse.
Still, he seemed to be unconscious. Considering how obnoxious the man was when awake, she would have preferred to leave him that way, but Caro supposed she had a moral obligation to rouse him. She poked him again in the ribs.
He let out a low groan, but his eyes remained closed.
Caro dropped to her knees beside him, grasped his shoulder, and gave him a hard shake. The muscles beneath the wet material of his jacket were incredibly solid.
She tried not to notice.
“Wake up, you insufferable oaf! It’s too hot to dig you a grave.”
She gave him another push, then almost jumped out of her skin when he sucked in a gasping breath and began coughing uncontrollably.
Caro gave him a few helpful whacks between his shoulder blades.
He flailed his arm and shoved her away. “Hoi! Stop that! I’m not dead, damn you!”
His voice was rough and raspy and she cursed the little frisson the sound always produced in her stomach. She scuttled backward like a crab as he rolled over onto his back and took a great lungful of air that made his chest expand even more.
He slung his forearm over his forehead, shielding his eyes from the blinding sun, and squinted up at her with a frown.
His eyes were an extraordinary turquoise, the same blue as the lagoon before them. Caro narrowed her own eyes in irritation. It was a stupid color for a man. Truly. It should have made him look pretty and vapid, like a doll, but instead they’d been paired with black-as-night eyebrows, a straight slash of a nose, and cheekbones that could have hewn granite. The effect was aggravatingly attractive.
His chin was covered in a peppering of dark stubble, as fine-grained as the white sand that stuck to his cheek, and Caro caught herself wondering what it would feel like against her palm.
Dear God, she must have sunstroke.
Hayworth, thankfully, was unaware of her ludicrous thoughts. He pushed himself into a sitting position with a groan and rested his head on his bent knees.
Caro scowled. She, no doubt, looked like a drowned rat. He somehow managed to look perfectly delicious, in a rumpled, careless, piratical sort of way. How had such an underserving wretch been endowed with such extraordinary good looks? It wasn’t fair.
Maximillian Cavendish hadn’t just been born with a silver spoon in his mouth – he’d been gifted the entire silver dinner service, too. Ever since his father’s death, when Max had been a boy of merely nine, he’d been heir-apparent to his childless uncle, the thirteenth Duke.
Caro had made his acquaintance years ago; he was one of her brother William’s closest friends, and she could unwaveringly state that Hayworth had displayed a confidence that bordered on arrogance even before his uncle’s demise had promoted him from duke-in-waiting to His Grace last year.
He was one of those people for whom everything seemed to come easily. In addition to sinful good looks, he possessed a fierce intelligence, a quick wit, and considerable charm—not that he’d ever wasted those last two attributes on her. He was irritatingly good at everything he tried; whether it was fencing, riding, or gaming at his club.
And, it seemed, surviving a shipwreck at sea.
He turned his head and caught her eye, and Caro’s heart gave an uncomfortable little thump. She’d always both craved and hated his regard.
“You’re right. I’m definitely not dead,” he said. “If I was dead, you’d be naked.”
Chapter 2.
Caro’s mouth fell open in shock. “I beg your pardon?”
“If I was dead,” Hayworth repeated, his voice a deliciously low rasp from the salt water he’d ingested, “and in heaven, then the beautiful woman who greeted me would most definitely be naked.”
Caro blinked. Beautiful? Had Maximillian Cavendish just called her beautiful?
She glanced around at the sky, the white sand, the palm trees swaying on the shore. What bizarre alternate universe was this? Was she dreaming? It was the only logical explanation. She pinched herself on the thigh, to make sure.
Nothing happened.
Hayworth didn’t seem to notice her confusion.
“Then again,” he used one hand to ruffle the sand from his tousled hair, “I might be dead and in hell. That’s very possible. In which case, being greeted by a fully-clothed siren who looks like she should be naked, but never takes her clothes off, well, that would be the very definition of punishment, wouldn’t it?”
Caro assumed that was a rhetorical question.
“You’re delirious,” she said stoutly. “Did the lifeboat hit you on the head when it overturned?”
He rubbed his scalp again, as if searching for lumps. “Don’t think so.”
“Look at me.”
He glanced at her again, and she stared deeply into his eyes, searching for any sign of recognition. Or, indeed, sanity.
He stared back at her solemnly. And then his mouth curved into a slow, wicked, openly appraising smile that made her stomach swirl dangerously. His gaze dropped to her lips, as if he was thinking of kissing her.
What on earth was happening?
“Stop being ridiculous,” she scolded. “I’m not an angel or a devil. You know who I am. I’m Caroline. Caro Montgomery. William’s sister.”
“Caro.” He repeated the name with a kind of wonder, rolling it around his mouth as though saying it for the first time. “Hello Caro. I’m glad you’re not dead.”
“As am I,” she muttered uncertainly.
Maybe that was it. Maybe she was the one who was dead, and in some dreadful underworld where her only companion was the one man guaranteed to drive her mad for all eternity. It made a horrible kind of sense. He’d cursed her when she was alive. It stood to reason that he’d haunt her when she was dead, with his irresistible smirk and his perfect, unattainable body.
He reached out and smoothed a strand of salt-encrusted hair back from her forehead. His palm stroked her cheek, and Caro froze in surprise at the appreciative look on his face.
What was wrong with him? He’d never looked at her in such a way before. He usually regarded her with a mocking expression that suggested she was the amusing, unwitting, butt of his jokes. Did he really not recognize her?
“So, we’ve established that you’re Caro,” he murmured. “Which would make me . . ?” He let the sentence trail off in a questioning uplift of sound.
“Cavendish,” Caro said irritably. The idiot was clearly fooling with her, pretending he’d forgotten his own name.
“Huh,” he said, sounding surprised. “Do people call me Cav?”
She was getting more exasperated by the second. “No, they don’t. Cavendish isn’t your first name. It’s your family name, you dolt. Your Christian name is Max.”
“Short for Maximillian, I assume?”
She batted his hand away. “Yes. Stop pretending you don’t remember.”
He let out a short laugh. “You think I’m feigning amnesia?”
“Of course you are. It’s precisely the kind of thing you’d do. Teasing me is one of your favorite pastimes.”
His lips twitched again. “It is? Teasing you?”
“Yes,” she gritted out. “You’ve been mocking me and laughing at me from the first moment we met.” That was absolutely true.
“And when was that?” he prompted.
“Years ago. You used to come and visit Will during the school holidays. And since then, every time we were in London, whenever my family was between expeditions.”
“Expeditions?”
“My father’s one of England’s best-known butterfly experts. We travel all around the world looking for them.”
“Hmm.” His reply was non-committal, and she studied him again, more closely.
“Do you really not remember?”
“I remember your face,” he said vaguely, “But as to the rest—” he gave a shrug that lifted his broad shoulders.
Caro was still suspicious. How could he remember her, but not his own name? It was extremely unlikely. Then again, the odds of them both surviving a shipwreck and being washed up, alive, on this same stretch of sand were infinitesimally small too. Perhaps he was telling the truth.
“Do you remember being a soldier? You served with Will at Waterloo.”
His brow furrowed again. “Yes, I do remember that. My horse was shot out from under me.”
Caro bit her lip. She’d heard the same thing from her brother’s account of the battle. It was yet another example of Hayworth’s charmed life that he’d emerged from that infamous bloodbath with hardly a scratch.
“Do you remember anything else about yourself?” Surely the man would recall he was a duke, for heaven’s sake.
He paused, as if racking his brains. “I know I like peppermint.”
Caro almost threw her hands up. This simply couldn’t be true.
And then the most wicked thought bubbled up in her brain. Perhaps he really didn’t remember. Perhaps fate was giving her this tiny sliver of opportunity to bring the arrogant devil down a peg or two. To level the playing field between them.
On this island, he wouldn’t be the smug, superior friend of her brother, the high-and-mighty Duke of Hayworth. And she wouldn’t be his best friend’s little sister. They could start again, as equals. As simply Caro and Max. A man and a woman. Two people stuck on an island, working together.
It was an extremely alluring thought.
He was still staring at her in that strange, slightly besotted way, and Caro schooled her face into a bland expression.
“It’s good that you remember your time in the army.” She patted him consolingly on the arm. “Do you remember what you did after that?”
She waited for him to shake his head, then sent him a wide smile. The kind of bright, reassuring smile she used to cheer up children when they’d scraped their knees or been bitten by an ant. “After you left the army you discovered your uncle—you’re his heir, by the way—had left you nothing but an enormous pile of debt.”
Caro had to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing at this monstrous falsehood. His uncle had indeed left him an enormous pile—of money—and a lovely country estate named Gatcombe Park which boasted no fewer than twenty-three bedrooms and a ballroom big enough to play cricket in.
Oh, she would roast in hell for this, but it was worth it. Even if she was greeted at the fiery gates by a fully-clothed Maximillian Cavendish who teased her for eternity with the possibility of seeing him naked, it would be worth it.
“My uncle?” Hayworth repeated slowly. “A mountain of debt. Are you sure?”
“Oh yes, very sure. William felt so sorry for you, having fallen on such hard times, that he offered you a job.”
Now Hayworth was delightfully confused, and Caro couldn’t resist giving him the piece de resistance. She cast around for a suitably lowering position.
“You’re a groom at our house in Lincolnshire. William says you’re wonderful with the horses.”
The incredulous look on Hayworth’s face—as if the very idea of being a groom offended him to the core—made Caro’s heart pound with the certainty that he’d recognize the lie and call her out.
Instead, he squinted up at the sun. “If I’m a groom, what am I doing here?”
“You’re doubling up as Will’s valet,” Caro temporized quickly. “His usual man, Timms, got sick the week before we were due to sail for Madagascar, so you came along instead.”
She waited for him to explode in outrage at her perjury. In truth, he’d only been a passenger on the Artemis because he’d been returning from a visit to see his cousin in India.
Hayworth’s lips did an odd little twitch, as if he was about to laugh, but then his expression sobered and he nodded. “Ah. A groomsman and sometime-valet. That makes sense. I do like horses. And I definitely remember how to tie a decent cravat.”
His hand strayed to this throat, where his own bedraggled neckcloth still hung incongruously about his neck. That it had survived the chaos of the pounding waves when they’d both been tossed from the lifeboat and thrust onto this sandy shore was another miracle.
He untied the sodden knot and tugged the thin strip of linen from his shoulders, revealing an intriguing wedge of tanned chest in the deep open V of his shirt.
Caro averted her eyes, but only after an indecently long look. When she glanced back up at him, guiltily, he’d turned his head away and was gazing out over the blue expanse of water in front of them.
“So. I’m Max and you’re Caro,” he said easily, and she was struck with the renewed suspicion that he was teasing her.
He squinted at the green shape of another island, visible on the near horizon. “How did we get here?”
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