Page 1 of Desert Island Duke

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.

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