Carolina Isle
Jude Deveraux
FOR PASSION AND INTRIGUE, BEAUTY AND DANGER, READ THESE BELOVED NOVELS FROM NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
JUDE DEVERAUX
ALWAYS
“Engaging … a delightful otherworldly fantasy.”
—TheBestReviews.com
“This third chapter in [Darci Monroe’s] life is by far the best…. Cannot be put down until the last word is read…. Truly amazing.”
—Romance Reviews Today
FOREVER AND ALWAYS
“An intriguing paranormal tale … loaded with action.”
—TheBestReviews.com
FOREVER …
“Irresistibly eerie, yet decidedly a love story, Deveraux’s offering bursts with high-spirited repartee and bizarre but bewitching characters.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[A] modern fairy tale…. This is Deveraux at her most pleasurable.”
—Booklist
“Exciting … filled with humor, romance, and the paranormal. Settle in for some exhilarating reading!”
—Romantic Times
Acclaim for Jude Deveraux’s splendid yuletide bestseller
HOLLY
“A fast-paced tale with more than one deadly twist…. [A] sexy story.”
—Library Journal
“Readers who like their Christmas on the hot side should go straight to Holly…. Romance with a dash of mystery and threat.”
—Barnesandnoble.com
And for her other unforgettable New York Times bestsellers
WILD ORCHIDS
“A not-to-be-missed novel … that will keep you on the edge of your chair.”
—Rendezvous
“Forget garden-variety ghosts and poltergeists—the devil himself makes an appearance in Deveraux’s romantic suspense novel…. [Deveraux] does a superb job of building up to her chilling conclusion.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Unlike anything Deveraux has written previously … uniquely intriguing … always entertaining.”
—Romantic Times
“Incredible, wonderful, fantastic, superb…. An unforgettable read.”
—Romance Reviews Today
THE MULBERRY TREE
“Deveraux’s touch is gold…. Irresistible.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A twisted, unpredictable story….”
—Romantic Times
“Mystery, romance, and good cooking converge in [The Mulberry Tree].”
—People
THE SUMMERHOUSE
“Marvelously compelling reading…. Deeply satisfying.”
—Houston Chronicle
“Deveraux … blends three love stories into an emotionally stirring novel.”
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“Deveraux is at the top of her game.”
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“Entertaining summer reading.”
—The Port St. Lucie News (FL)
TEMPTATION
“Filled with excitement, action, and insight…. A nonstop thriller.”
—Harriet Klausner, Barnesandnoble.com
“[A] satisfying story.”
—Booklist
“Deveraux[‘s] lively pace and happy endings … will keep readers turning pages.”
—Publishers Weekly
BOOKS BY JUDE DEVERAUX
The Velvet Promise
Wishes
Highland Velvet
Mountain Laurel
Velvet Song
The Duchess
Velvet Angel
Eternity
Sweetbriar
Sweet Liar
Counterfeit Lady
The Invitation
Lost Lady
Remembrance
River Lady
The Heiress
Twin of Fire
Legend
Twin of Ice
An Angel for Emily
The Temptress
The Blessing
The Raider
High Tide
The Princess
Temptation
The Awakening
The Summerhouse
The Maiden
The Mulberry Tree
The Taming
Forever …
The Conquest
Wild Orchids
A Knight in Shining Armor
Forever and Always
Holly
First Impressions
Jude Deveraux
Carolina Isle
The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”
An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Deveraux, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-0972-1
ISBN-10: 1-4165-0972-0
eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-8386-1
This Pocket Books paperback edition January 2006
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Carolina Isle
Chapter One
“I WILL NEVER MARRY DAVID TREDWELL!”
Ariel Weatherly looked in the mirror and rehearsed her speech to her mother. “I am twenty-four years old and I will choose my own husband.” No, she thought. That’s not right. “I have chosen the man I want to marry and I will do so.” Yes, better. Much better.
There was a soft knock on the door.
On impulse, Ariel messed up her hair. She liked what she saw.
“Come in,” Ariel said, and a maid opened the door.
“Your mother would like to see you downstairs.”
“Yes, of course,” Ariel replied with a sigh.
The maid looked behind her to make sure Mrs. Weatherly wasn’t nearby. “I like your hair,” she said, then closed the door.
Ariel grabbed her brush and smoothed her hair, then she smiled. She wasn’t sure yet, but she may have come up with a way to get out of marrying David, to marry the man she truly loved, and to keep from being disinherited. Still smiling, she left her room and started down the stairs. If only Sara would agree. She must! Ariel thought. If she doesn’t …
But Ariel couldn’t think of that now. She only knew that she’d use whatever means she had at her disposal to get her cousin to agree to her plan.
Chapter Two
SARA READ ARIEL’S LETTER, THEN READ it again. She couldn’t believe her eyes. As always, the letter was written with a fountain pen on thick paper that Sara was sure cost half her year’s salary. But it wasn’t the extravagance that shocked her; she was used to that.
Ariel wanted to trade places with Sara. She wanted to be Sara, and Sara to be her.
“She wants to be me?” Sara whispered
in wonder as she put the letter on her lap. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the leisure to sit around all day and plan adventurous schemes? she thought. Or time to plan anything, for that matter. Time to do anything other than whatever your egomaniac boss could think up for you to do? Sara had come to care about her cousin a great deal over the years, but that didn’t keep her from being jealous.
Sitting in her tiny New York apartment, her feet up, exhausted from yet another day running around doing her boss’s bidding, Sara gazed out the window to the brick wall across the alley. She could afford a better apartment, but after a lifetime of struggling to make ends meet, she’d rather have money in the bank than spend it. And then there was the fact that she was constantly telling her boss that she was quitting. If she quit, how long would it be before she got another job? But choosing to live as though it might all be gone tomorrow didn’t make her feel any less jealous about her cousin’s big house with the servants, and about the two trips a year that Ariel and her mother took to New York to buy clothes. What would it be like to have a dress made just for you? Sara wondered.
She looked down at the letter. “Just for a while,” Ariel had written. “Temporarily.” Sara smiled at that. Poor Ariel, so spoiled, everything given to her. She wouldn’t have a clue how to work for somebody like R. J. Brompton.
The whole idea was absurd, of course, but it was nice to daydream. In fact, Ariel’s letter opened Sara’s eyes to a secret she’d kept even from herself: She wanted to see Arundel, North Carolina. Not just see it as a tourist would, but see it from the inside. She wanted to make her own judgment about the place. Her father had told her Arundel was “the center of hell,” yet Ariel wrote of the glories of her hometown.
Sara knew she had relatives in Arundel, but she’d never met them. Because of old wounds, she was sure that if she showed up there as Sara Jane Johnson she wouldn’t be welcome. But what if she got to know them as Ariel and showed them she wasn’t like her father’s side of the family? What would happen when she finally told them who she was? Would they welcome her—or hate her?
Getting to know the people of Arundel sounded good in theory, but the truth was, she was afraid of the place.
For seventeen years, what had been “done to them” was Sara’s father’s favorite topic of conversation—if you can call monologues that never ended conversation. She’d heard in detail how her mother grew up as part of “the family” in Arundel, a place that, according to her father, was the center of all snobbery on earth. “It begins there and radiates outward,” he said. “Like the rays of the sun?” she asked when she was a child and still thought her father was actually talking to her. “No, more like a spreading disease,” he said. He told Sara that her mother had been one of the bluebloods, one of the elite, the four hundred, whatever he could think of to call them, but she had fallen in love with him—and that had been the end of her. Sara’s father’s family was dirt poor, like the sharecroppers of the olden days, he told her, making his family sound noble. “But your mother’s family couldn’t stand people who worked for a living,” he said. “Honest workers, that’s all we were, but they hated us.”
Sara’s grandfather had disowned his daughter after she eloped. She died in a car wreck when Sara was three, and her father finally drank enough to kill his body when she was seventeen.
Sara looked back down at the letter.
She was just finishing her freshman year of college when she met Ariel for the first time. Sara had been in the study room of her coed dorm, up all night cramming for finals. She hadn’t showered in three days and her hair was hanging in greasy strings around her face. She was in her usual uniform of sweatpants and a stained sweatshirt, and her feet were encased in worn-out running shoes. Not that Sara ever ran. Or did any exercise. Like most college students, she lived on pizza and Coke.
At first Sara felt, rather than saw, Ariel. It was like when people say they feel a ghost. When Sara looked up from her book, the room was silent, and everyone was staring at a young woman standing in the doorway. She was pretty in her simple dress, a dress Sara was willing to bet cost more than she’d spent on all the clothes in her closet. To Sara’s astonishment, the young woman walked straight toward her. “Could we talk?” she asked.
Feeling clumsy and dirty, Sara mumbled, “Yeah, sure,” and followed the elegant young woman outside. Sara wondered if she wanted her to cut her lawn. Growing up, Sara had been the kid who cut the lawns and pruned the boxwoods. She was the kid who baby-sat.
The perfect young woman sat down carefully on a stone bench under a flowering dogwood. She stared at Sara for a few moments, then told her they were cousins. “I was told we looked alike,” Ariel said.
Sara smiled at that. Never had she looked like this woman did.
“I didn’t call first because I didn’t know your number. I hope it was all right to just show up. I really wanted to meet you.”
“Yes, it’s okay,” Sara said, her eyes wide from looking at her cousin so hard. Could she really be related to this beautiful creature with her perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect everything?
“Do you think we could correspond?” Ariel asked.
“Write letters?” Sara asked. “Sure, why not?” She was thinking that she’d have nothing to say to a woman whose life was so obviously different from her own. Ariel reeked of money, education, and manners. Sara had a flash of memory of her own father sprawled on the couch, snoring in a drunken stupor.
For a moment the two young women sat in silence, then Ariel looked at her watch—a tiny thing of gold and diamonds. “I wish I could have gone to college,” she said, sighing.
Something about the way she sighed made Sara decide that there was more to Ariel than she saw on the surface. Yes, she sat perfectly straight, and yes, she wore clothes that had probably been on a runway, but maybe, just maybe, there was a person inside. “College isn’t that great,” Sara said.
Smiling, Ariel said, “I have thirty minutes before I have to leave. Tell me everything about your life. Please.”
“Only if you tell me about your … I mean, our relatives.”
“I’d love to,” Ariel said, then they started talking in a surprisingly easy way, almost comfortable with each other. Ariel was a good listener and a good storyteller.
While they talked, Sara studied Ariel as though she were a specimen under a microscope. Sara wasn’t sure Ariel knew it or not, but she was as regal as a princess. Her gestures—the way she sat on the bench with her back straight and her ankles crossed—was something out of a 1950s charm school.
Sara, her legs folded on the concrete seat, often pushed the hair out of her eyes, but Ariel sat straight and still, and her perfect pageboy haircut never so much as moved in the breeze.
Sara looked at the way people on campus stopped and stared at Ariel. A group of rowdy boys, obviously laughing over something dirty, saw Ariel and instantly became young gentlemen.
Suddenly, Ariel got up. “I have to go. You won’t lose my address, will you? Actually, it’s the address of a friend of mine. Just whatever you do, don’t call my house or send anything there.”
Sara stood up too and they were eye-to-eye, both five feet three. “I understand,” Sara said, her teeth clamped together. “You don’t want people to know that you’re related to someone of my class.”
Ariel looked at her blankly, obviously not understanding. “You’re my first cousin. How can you be a different class than I am? No, it’s my mother. She’d be quite unpleasant if she knew I had any outside contact with the world. She’d make me marry David tomorrow.”
Inside, Sara was smiling. Me the same class as this perfectly dressed young woman? What a ridiculous concept; what a divine thought. “Who is David?”
Reaching into her exquisite little handbag, Ariel pulled out a photo of a young man in a football uniform. She handed it to Sara, who looked in astonishment at a truly gorgeous man. In college she was surrounded by masses of good-looking people, but this man was in a class all hi
s own. “You do not want to marry this guy?”
Ariel looked at her watch again, and said, “I’d explain, but I must go.” The next second she was hurrying down the sidewalk. To her waiting limo? Sara wondered. Ariel waved her hand over her shoulder, then was out of sight.
Sara stood there for a while, staring into space. Her cynicism made her wonder what it was that Ariel really wanted. But as hard as Sara tried, she couldn’t come up with anything she had that Ariel might want. The photo of the unwanted David was still in her hand. He really was the best-looking male she’d ever seen. She slipped the picture into her pocket, then headed back toward the dorm, but when she got to the door, she stopped.
Her state university didn’t have a good football team. Actually, it wasn’t all that good in any sport, but what it did have was a great drama department. In fact, there were several well-known actors who’d started at her university. Sara had toyed with trying her hand at acting—after all, hadn’t she been acting when she’d smiled and told people that things were great at home? But the head of the drama department was known as a real bastard. To get into his department you had to prove to him that you were worthy. He didn’t let you read a part that someone else had written, but made you perform a character of your own creation. You had to do this in front of him and all his students, and Sara was told that his criticism was brutal, meant to humiliate. More than one student had left the university after just five minutes with him.
Sara had thought about performing a character like her father, but that would have been telling too much about herself, so she didn’t try out. But as she had her hand on the door into the dorm, on impulse, she turned away and started toward the drama department. Sara knew that at the moment she looked her worse, but that was good. If she could imitate Ariel while looking as bad as she did, then she knew she could get into that department.
