A March Bride (A Year of Weddings 1 #4)
Rachel Hauck
Thank you to the HarperCollins Christian Fiction team for inviting me into the Year of Weddings novella collection. I had great fun writing Susanna and King Nathaniel’s wedding.
I appreciate the efforts of my editor, Becky Philpott, whose taste in story mirrors my own.
Thank you to Sandy Moffett for information on private jets. Any mistakes are mine.
A shout-out to Susan May Warren and Beth Vogt for sounding out my crazy story ideas. You keep me grounded with your friendship.
Much love to my husband who allows me all kinds of space to be who God’s called me to be. And who found a video game to play while I write on deadline. Way to take one for the team, babe!
To all the readers who take the time to read my stories. I really, really appreciate you all! Thank you!
KING NATHANIEL II AND AMERICAN
SUSANNA TRUITT ENGAGED!
KING NATHANIEL: “I’M MARRYING THE LOVE OF MY LIFE”
BRIGHTON KINGDOM
The Liberty Press
2 JUNE
King Nathaniel will achieve what few of his ancestors have been able to: the right to marry the love of his life, American Susanna Truitt.
Less than a day after he convinced Parliament to amend the Marriage Act of 1792 forbidding marriage between foreigners and royals in line to the throne, he winged his way to St. Simons Island, Georgia, and proposed.
Was it romantic?
According to Truitt, “Very. He strung white lights from this old, old oak tree, got down on one knee, and even produced fake snow.” Truitt blushed as she glanced at King Nathaniel. “I told him I wouldn’t fall in love again until it snowed in Georgia.”
“She never stipulated it must be real snow,” the king said, his arm around his bride-to-be as they sat in the Crown Room of the King’s Office, fielding questions from select reporters.
The king never intended to fall in love eighteen months ago while on holiday in southern Georgia. But “God,” he said, “had other things in mind.”
Truitt, a landscape architect, designed the king’s American cottage garden. While she presented garden ideas, romance bloomed.
“I’d just ended a long relationship where I thought marriage was the end game,” Truitt said. “But instead of proposing, my boyfriend broke up with me. That very same day, a year-and-a-half ago, I met Nathaniel under this ancient tree, Lovers’ Oak.”
The king proposed under the same tree. The newly engaged couple plan a March wedding.
“Susanna needs time to adjust to Brighton as well as royal life.”
“It’s very different from slinging barbecue in my mama and daddy’s Rib Shack,” Truitt said, going on to say that joining the royal family is daunting and that the notion of being “a royal” has not completely sunk in.
From Stratton Palace, Dowager Queen Campbell declared she was “thrilled” for her son. “True love comes along so rarely these days.”
Prince Stephen, the king’s younger brother, issued a statement from his rugby club. “Susanna is quite the sport. She’s good fun and a solid match for Nathaniel. I’m profoundly jealous. But happy for my brother.”
Truitt will be the first foreigner to marry a Brighton ruler since Princess Paulette of Lorraine, the wife of Crown Prince Kenneth, nearly destroyed our military forces by urging her husband and father-in-law to aid her uncle, King Louis XVI, during the French Revolution.
What’s the word on the street of this “American invasion”?
“I don’t care who he marries,” uttered a customer at a Cathedral City Starbucks.
Others exude more enthusiasm. One university student said, “My friends and I think it’s grand. She’s a lucky girl. We wish them joy.”
Wedding plans are just beginning as Truitt transitions from America to Brighton Kingdom. Designers are frothing to be the Chosen One for the future queen’s wedding gown.
But who knows what this American will choose for her dress or her wedding venue? Traditionally, all Stratton House royals have married at Watchman Abbey, where the king’s coronation was held this past January.
“We don’t know what Susanna will do,” said Penny Pitworth, a royal reporter for B-TV. “She may not want to marry in Brighton at all.”
Hold your collective gasps. The king and future queen of Brighton may not marry on our sapphire isle at all but on her home isle of St. Simons in Georgia.
“Either way,” Pitworth said, “we’ve a royal wedding upcoming and all of Brighton should rejoice.”
And so we shall.
For the first time in her life, Susanna Truitt was uncomfortable in a garden. As a landscape architect, she viewed gardens as her sweet spot, her place of rest and peace, but standing among the esteemed guests of Lord and Lady Chadweth’s seventeenth-century ivy-covered stone and glass atrium, she felt the arrow of doubt spear her heart.
Three weeks before her wedding, and anxiety rumbled in her soul.
She cut a glance toward her fiancé, King Nathaniel II of Brighton Kingdom, as he laughed with his old university mates.
What in the world was she doing here? Surely Nathaniel had changed his mind about marrying her.
Susanna breathed out, collected her fears, and shoved them aside as she tipped her face toward the bright rays of sun slicing through the glass pane ceiling. After a long Brighton winter, she was homesick for Georgia.