Page 3 of Desert Island Duke

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.

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