Start reading The Mistress of Dara Island by Averil Kenny

CHAPTER 1

PROMISED LAND

Dara Island, the Great Barrier Reef, 1957

Determination was Thalia’s middle name. Or it should have been, were it not already Blue – so given by her ma, the proprietress of Dara Island. Named for a palette of impossible hues: the supreme turquoise of the Coral Sea encompassing their island paradise; the swarming fish shoals and shallow sea stars; the blue-glittered butterflies, fairywrens and kingfishers flashing through the jungle deep; the indigo skies of the monsoon; and the bright cyan gleam of her eyes. Thalia Blue, the heiress of Dara.

That, of course, had proved too fanciful a name for the intrepid tot growing up among the small working village of Dara’s Mermaid Bay Resort, with her streaky driftwood curls perpetually wind tangled, her nose ever pink and peeling from the sun, her feet and shoulders always bare, nutbrown, salt dusted. Soon, she came to be known simply as Tally.

Eleven-year-old Tally was the whole island’s daughter, not just the only child of Richard Ramsey, the most powerful man in the region. She was as beloved as he was feared.

But Ma, and Ma alone, called her Tally Ho . . .

‘My Tally Ho – when she sets her mind on a thing, nothing can ever stand in her way.’

It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about Tally, and no surprise it should come from Ma. There was not a kinder person, nor a gentler spirit in all the world than Nerissa Ramsey nee Forster. One day, when Dara was hers, Tally hoped to have as much wisdom and patience as Ma did – though she didn’t like her chances. It was her determination that was the problem, for it always seemed to get the better of her.

This cicada-shrill summer morn had unfolded in familiar fashion: Tally had filched a fruit-platter breakfast from Anita in the resort kitchen, helped resort groundsman Frank with the coconut de-nutting, and swum with stingrays and reef sharks under the long jetty with her island playmate, Lila. Then, she had grown restless. Rebelliousness invariably followed restlessness, and so, Tally had set out to right the latest injustice in her young life.

While her father was doing his morning rounds of the resort, she determined to retrieve the red leatherette notebook he had confiscated from her weeks earlier for some forgotten misdeed and then locked away in his hallowed office – a place no Ramsey woman was permitted. She was sick of asking, and being denied. Her father, for all that he terrified her, would not stand in her way.

Had she a sibling, Tally might have engaged their help to keep watch outside the Ramseys’ grand plantation house. ‘Eyrie’ was perched high on a rainforest rise overlooking the resort below, the panoramic sweep of bejewelled ocean and the distant mainland. With no one to whistle alarm, however, Tally tried to keep one ear turned towards the pebble path cutting up through the garden terrace. At any minute her father might return, and if Tally was caught, she’d be sorry indeed. Even Ma’s intercessions wouldn’t save her.

It was worth the risk. That notebook contained her ‘Dara Happenings’, and he had no right to steal something so private! In truth, it was only her latest Happenings book. She had ninety-nine others like it, for she was forever pilfering her father’s spare account books to fill with the daily goings-on.

But this latest one was her juiciest yet, filled with more drama and intrigue than ever. She prided herself on being the first to know anything that happened here, spending inestimable hours trailing around behind the live-in staff of Dara’s Mermaid Bay Resort, gathering their news and views and funny titbits. While running and hiding from her father over the years, shed spent much time concealed in nooks and crannies across the resort, from guest wardrobes, to the groundskeepers’ shed and underneath the chef’s bench in the brasserie. In this manner, she’d gleaned so many interesting things from the people who made the beds, or served the drinks, scrubbed the toilets and tended the grounds. Things no staff member of Dara wanted their boss to know, much less hold against them.

And he would, oh he would.