Chapter One
ISABELLA CYCLED ALONG the palm-lined road leading from the café where she’d just finished her third lunch shift waiting tables, unable to stop a grin from splitting her face. Her third shift in a row, and now she’d been asked to do both lunch and dinner tomorrow!
She couldn’t believe it. She, Princess Isabella d’Montcroix, actually had a job and was working.
Really working at a real job, just like a normal person, and she hadn’t messed up.
Sure, they didn’t know she was a princess, and in truth, she’d had to work at it.
Memorising table numbers and orders and working out how to stack a table full of plates on one arm and not drop them on the way back to the kitchen while she was being yelled at by Chef to hurry up had almost done her head in—but she’d survived, and now she was being rewarded with more shifts.
Dappled sunlight played through the shadows, brief flashes of light amongst the twilight of the lush rainforest surrounds allowing glimpses of the cerulean lagoon to one side.
It had rained this morning, a light shower that coupled with the day’s sunshine, had heightened the earthy rainforest scent.
Izzy breathed deeply of the heady combination of forest floor with the lagoon’s salt air, a smell she would forever associate with the smell of freedom, and she grinned some more.
Finally, she could feel the tension of the last few weeks slip away.
Finally, she was starting to believe that she was safe and could stop looking over her shoulder every other minute.
Hopefully for long enough to enjoy it.
But more than that, hopefully long enough to convince her brother to abandon his abhorrent plan to marry her off to one of his cronies.
Because there was no way she was going home until he did.
A van trundled past at the requisite twenty-five-kilometres-per-hour island speed limit, the driver lifting a hand to her as he passed.
Jack, she realised, the owner of the café, on his way to meet the afternoon plane to pick up fresh fruit and vegetable supplies.
She waved back, her heart skipping a beat as the bike wobbled, before she replaced her hand on the handlebars, steadying both her heart rate and the bike.
Riding a bike had been another challenge, but here on the island, it was either that or walk, and she was rapidly conquering this new learned skill too, discovering muscles she’d never realised she had as she turned her bicycle up the road heading up the hill and away from the lagoon, towards the row of cabins let out to the casual workers who serviced the island’s resort and hostel labour needs.
Backpackers like they assumed she was, just another tourist from Europe working a few weeks or months to replenish travel funds before once more, moving on.
She jumped off when she met the steep path leading to her cabin, pushing her bike past pink and red flowering hibiscus bushes and waving to her neighbours, Sven and Inga relaxing on their small balcony.
That was another thing she loved about the island.
Everybody waved and said hello, whether you were a casual worker, a tourist or one of the sprinkling of island residents who’d lived on the island for generations.
‘Come and join us,’ said Inga, holding up her bottle of lager. ‘We’re celebrating surviving the climb up Mt Gower.’
‘You did it?’ Izzy asked, parking her bike against her veranda railing and unclipping her helmet.
She had hair to colour tonight, part of the disguise she’d assumed to camouflage her blonde hair, but that could wait a little longer.
Right now she wanted to hear about her neighbours’ climb.
The island boasted dozens of bush walks through its kentia palm and banyan tree subtropical rainforest coverage, with the eight-plus-hour return hike up the nearly kilometre-high mountain the number one challenge.
‘Congratulations,’ she said, pulling up a chair beside them as Inga pulled a beer from a six-pack and handed it to her.
Izzy smiled as she clinked longnecks with her neighbours before taking a sip of the amber liquid straight from the bottle.
Another new skill she’d acquired since being in Australia.
Her brother would be horrified if he could see her right now, and that made her smile widen. ‘So tell me, what was it like?’
‘Amazing,’ Inge said. ‘You have to do it. The views are breathtaking.’
Sven nodded after taking a long swallow. ‘It’s tough, but worth it. You should definitely do it while you’re here.’
‘I will,’ she said, excited at the prospect and loving the buzz of being able to decide what she wanted to do and then simply go do it without an entire palace deciding on whether or not it was an appropriate occupation for a princess before then planning it down to the tiniest detail, right down to laying out the appropriate outfit she should wear.
It was liberating, this new freedom. Intoxicating.
Addictive. ‘I am definitely going to do that,’ she said, making a promise to herself and sealing the deal with another sip of her beer. ‘Cheers.’
Later that evening Isabella applied a fresh layer of chalk to her hair.
She’d read that the best way to disguise yourself was not necessarily to add glasses or another disguise, but to take something away.
She was taking away the platinum blonde, which was far too Princess Isabella for her liking.
And now that every second woman seemed to have brightly coloured hair, nobody looked twice at hers.
Job done, she checked out her hair in the mirror, now red and purple with the odd strip of teal.
She smiled. Perfect. Nobody would guess she was a princess.
She made herself a mug of tea and stepped out onto her little porch in time to catch the dying rays of the sunset over the tops of the palm trees, painting the sky a brilliant red.
She put her mug down and watched a while, in awe as the colours intensified, then shifted and softened. God, it was a gorgeous place to live.
She’d come here seeking sanctuary. A hideaway.
But the longer she was here, the more she loved this island.
Here, she was accepted for herself, not for her association with the royal Montcroix family of Rubanestein.
And as much as she loved her European homeland and knew how privileged she was, it was refreshing to be somewhere where she could be known for herself, not just for being a princess.
Lord Howe Island was the perfect place to hide.
Here on this island, nobody grilled her about her accent because it seemed like every second person she’d met was from somewhere else.
Even better, not one person questioned why she was here, because everybody knew the answer. Because who wouldn’t want to be here, on this island paradise?
Izzy smiled to herself as she headed inside to make a fresh mug of tea. Nobody in a million years would pick she was a European princess, and nobody could know, given her passport was safely tucked away in a safety deposit box in Sydney.
Nobody would find her here.