Chapter Two

Six months later…

“Don’t jump.”

Elena’s voice was grouchy, but Elena’s voice was always grouchy around me.

I made a point of stretching my neck out to look over the balcony edge, down to the softly lapping water of Lake Como below. “I won’t,” I promised her. “Just because it’s only four stories down. I’d likely survive it.”

Elena grunted. “And then I’d have to clean up the mess.”

“And here I was, thinking you’d started caring about me.”

Another dismissive sound, although I wasn’t quite sure yet how to translate it. My Italian was fluent, but the slight difference of meaning between “pah!” and “bah!” still escaped me.

I slid my hands along the stone balustrade and lifted my face to the sun, soon to set in the west. It was the first glimpse of sunshine we’d seen in weeks, as the shores of Lake Como had been hammered by one dreary winter day after another.

I closed my eyes and smiled, treasuring the thin layer of warmth to be found underneath the chill from the water.

For a moment, I was reminded of Drieden.

Home.

A tiny nation on the North Sea, Drieden suffered long, stormy winters that were dark and gray. My people knew how to treasure slivers of sunshine.

Elena muttered something I didn’t catch. I swore she did it on purpose, some sort of trick-the-Driedener game she played. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” I said politely.

“For a woman who doesn’t like to be seen, you’re showing yourself off to the world.”

I opened one eye and squinted at the view of the lake. This was about the farthest I could get from “showing myself off.” On the penthouse-level terrace of my house on the outskirts of Varenna, there was no one around who could see me, except maybe the people on the few boats that had braved a February day. And even then, I had taken care to wear my large Sophia Loren sunglasses and a chic wide-brimmed felt hat. Just because I was in hiding didn’t mean that I couldn’t bring it in the fashion department.

But I wasn’t going to get defensive with Elena. Or explain it all to her.

I had hired her almost a year ago to help me manage this property. Villa Cavalletta teetered on terraced land above the lake on the outer edge of the village. I had bought it as an investment, just before my marriage. Years ago, the villa had been split into three apartments. The basement and ground level I offered to Elena, as part of her salary. She would then manage the two apartments above, renting them to the near-constant stream of tourists and vagabonds that flocked to Lake Como every year.

I had never planned on being one of those vagabonds myself.

But now I lived like a hermit in the penthouse apartment. It was rather grand for a single woman who had no family, no friends and as little interaction with her property manager as possible. But it was rather humble for a former royal princess, so I supposed the whole thing balanced out on some universal scale of justice.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked Elena. “Or did you come up here just to criticize me? Again,” I added pointedly.

Elena refused to be intimidated by me. For the first few months, I tried keeping a proper employer–employee distance in our relationship. But Elena had a way of irritating me so much I couldn’t help but feel warmly toward her. I know it’s sick, but I had grown up in a royal family full of—let’s call them difficult—personalities. If someone acted superior toward me and chastised me for the way I chose to dress, I was reminded of dear Big Gran back in the Palace in Drieden City.

Home.

My issues would make a therapist’s head spin.

“I’m going to my sister’s for the next two nights. I just wanted to let you know.” She crossed her arms and nodded her head, all business.

“What about Signore Rossi?” I asked, referring to her elderly father, who lived in the ground-floor apartment.

“Two nights.” She held up two fingers. “Due.” She said the word in Italian, slowly, as if I hadn’t understood her. “He’s fine. I have left him food and water and a partially charged cell phone. Hopefully, he won’t use the battery up, texting his girlfriends.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Disgraced princess, widow and recluse I might be, but I could still appreciate that Elena’s sharp wit hid a soft heart.

“I’ll check on him while you’re gone,” I said.

“Grazie, Lina.”

After six months of hiding in Italy, I was still not used to hearing my Italian alias on someone’s lips. My name is Lina DiLorenzo, I’d told Elena that first day, when I had arrived at Villa Cavalletta with nothing but a hat box and two Louis Vuitton suitcases.

Perhaps that was why it always took me an extra second to regroup after she used my name. “No one’s made a reservation?” I asked, referring to the middle apartment we still rented out to tourists.

Elena shook her head. “You can stay up here and watch the water, for all I care.”

I smiled slightly at that. “And the newspapers?”

She grimaced. “Pah! I forgot!”

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “I can go.”

Her answering frown reminded me that she wasn’t as grouchy as she pretended. And I wasn’t as scared of the outside world as I pretended.

Mostly.

I greeted the gentleman behind the newsstand at the train station in brief no-nonsense Italian. He handed over my papers, the same ones Elena usually collected every week. This newsstand was the only one in Varenna that carried a wide range of European publications, thanks to the tourists who regularly passed through the station on their way to and from their various holiday destinations.

I did not know the man’s name, and he did not know mine. Besides Elena and Signore Rossi, no one knew my alias in Varenna, which was just as I liked it.

After another short errand, I hefted my bags back through the streets and up the steep steps in the hillside to my home.

I put my shopping on the pale marble table that served as a desk in my salon and cracked open a window that looked out over the water. Even though it was winter, I needed fresh air. Craved it, in fact. I had spent my entire life, it seemed, in houses and castles and manors where windows were sealed tight.

Here in Varenna, I wanted to breathe freely.

Through the open window, I heard music coming from the streets below. For five, six days, it had been the same. A guitar and a sad, yet strong, baritone. It seemed like most of the songs were in English, although a few were in a language I couldn’t identify. Gaelic, perhaps? The lyrics were mostly about women who had left. Maybe that’s why I liked them so much.

But I couldn’t listen to a busker’s song all day long. Lina DiLorenzo had to finish a chore.

Not that reading was a chore. In fact, reading took up most of my days here in my northern Italian hidey-hole. But reading the newspapers from my home country made me feel like acid was eating a hole in my stomach lining.

At first I had resolved to leave everything behind. When I escaped from the reception held after Stavros’s funeral, I knew it would be hours before anyone looked for me. And when they did, they would be looking for the blonde Driedish princess they thought they knew, inconsolable with a grief they could not imagine.

They didn’t know that the highlighted hair had been left in Slovenia. The title of Princess had been dropped on her wedding day. And my Driedish heritage had been forgotten as soon as Lina DiLorenzo stepped off the train in Varenna.

Or so I had thought.

Until a Driedish paper left behind in the rented apartment brought a part of my past back to me. The language of my childhood, the stories about familiar places and names were a balm I hadn’t known I’d needed. But it wasn’t a soothing balm. Oh, no. It was more of a burning liniment, a necessary discomfort for a sore back or aching muscles.

I still told Elena to start buying the papers, though. If anyone asked, they were for my guests.

Computers were out of the question. Too many sites kept track of who came and went. Consistent clicks on articles about the Driedish royals from an Italian backwater town could raise flags. But the newspapers provided me intelligence on what my distinguished family was up to now and were my aversion therapy when homesickness reared its inconvenient head.

I settled into an emerald-green velvet chair and started flipping through the Driedish news. My grandmother was Her Royal Highness Queen Aurelia, and there was a lot about the preparations taking place for her fortieth-anniversary celebration next summer. I skimmed through and, as always, I kept an eye out for my name.

After Stavros’s death, the papers had been crammed with stories about me. Most of it was speculation—about my future plans, whether I was returning to Drieden (no) or begging for my grandmother’s forgiveness (certainly not.) Finally, my sister, Princess Theodora, made a statement to the press: “The Royal Family of Drieden thanks the entire country for their prayers and well wishes on the death of Stavros Di Bernardo. On behalf of our beloved Caroline, we ask for privacy and the time to heal.”

It was typical, perfect Princess Theodora. Saying just the right thing, in just the right way, and no one noticed that she said absolutely nothing at all about anything important.

Still, I was in her debt. The press coverage about me, my dead husband and my whereabouts trickled down significantly after my sister’s statement. Everyone assumed I was in deep mourning on a mountaintop or on a cloistered island and, apparently, if I hadn’t had a scandalous affair with a race car driver, I would have been very boring indeed.

Which suited me fine.

And speaking of my perfect older sister, here she was in the newspaper. Again. Months ago, they had heralded her new “Princess Theodora Trust,” which seemed to be some sort of charitable money-laundering operation for my grandmother, if I knew my grandmother at all. Now my older sister was constantly appearing at philanthropic events and good causes dressed in chic suits and holding up big checks.

Driedeners loved her.

PRINCESS THEODORA BREAKS GROUND ON HISTORICAL MONUMENT.

Yawn. That was right up Thea’s alley, though. She always paid more attention to Driedish history than the rest of us did. My sister Sophie barely knew how to spell her own name. My brother, Henry, liked the bits about wars and battles but tuned out the rest.

Me? I learned what I needed to learn to navigate life in the palace. Make everyone happy. Negotiate and collaborate. Be perfect.

After finishing the Driedish papers, I breathed a sigh of relief. There were no imminent threats to my way of life. At least, for today.

One more newspaper had to be reviewed. I had saved it for last.

I found what I was looking for on the second page of The Times. The latest in a series of reports revealing a massive corruption scandal in race car driving under the byline of Clémence Diederich.

All right, fine. Clémence Diederich was me. It was my pseudonym.

I know, I could drag this secret out and play coy with it, but really, I am quite proud of the work I do.

My journalism career—for want of a better word—began years ago. I had made friends with an American reporter through some charity work. One thing led to another and I started quietly explaining (off the record, of course) some of the finer points of Driedish divorce law to him. Then, I wrote a small piece about the opening of a cultural exhibit in New York, and maybe a few more that I wish I hadn’t, under the name Cordelia Lancaster.

To cut a long story short, once I was free of my royal shackles and just a commoner married to a race car driver, and I saw first hand what was going on behind the scenes in Stavros’s profession, I contacted my friend about a tell-all.

Now, my series had been published in The Times over the past four months. This was the last article.

And then what?

It was the question I kept ignoring.

There wasn’t much investigatory journalism I could do while hiding in the attic of a remote Italian villa.

And I couldn’t go out in public yet. What sorts of stories could a disinherited royal princess report on, anyway? I didn’t want to talk tea parties and etiquette or film-festival fashion.

I wanted to write about interesting things. Important things.

From bitter experience, I knew that no one really wanted me to be interesting. Or important.

They would want either bland and banal or shocking and fabulous.

It was my bad luck to be somewhere in the middle.

I gathered up the papers, intending then to check the reservation website for the villa to ensure that no guests had made a last-minute booking. Since it was February, tourism was at a low, but one never knew if a couple of frugal Americans had taken advantage of a low fare and decided to visit Lake Como in the coldest month of the year.

But before I could get the website up, I heard the baritone again on the streets below and it made me stop in my tracks.

How long had it been since I had felt anything like this stirring in my chest? Since my husband’s death? Since his kisses first took my breath away? Since our wedding day?

I had been numb for so long. The day that Stavros died, I screamed, trembled, felt my heart break.

We hadn’t had the perfect marriage, but then, I wasn’t a perfect wife. Our notoriety, my fame, my impulsive yes, had led directly to his death.

For a fleeting moment when Stavros proposed I thought I was loved for myself, for the woman I was. But then I learned the truth. I was not a perfect wife, or daughter, or sister. Not fit for a crown, not fit for anything, really. So I shut down and locked the door to the past.

I was living the life I had now out of necessity. I was nothing but an anonymous Italian woman in a small tourist village. No one looked twice at the dark-haired Lina, who kept herself to herself and didn’t cause any trouble. I lived behind high walls and stayed invisible. Like a ghost.

It had to be like this. Distance and anonymity meant safety. For everyone. For me.

Songs like that, though. Flowing through my window like a cool, peaty stream, made me want to feel again, like I used to.

I marched across the kitchen and slammed the window down.

There would be no more feeling. No chances taken.

Until it was safe.