Once Upon a Prince (9 page)

She laughed. “Clint Eastwood? That’s a mighty big name for a mouse.”

“He wore it well.”

“Why did you say you were envious of me earlier?”

“Because.” He turned forward again and raised his tumbler to take a drink, covering his answer. “I just am. You have options. A blank diary in which to design your life.”

How did he read her heart so well? “And you don’t?”

“Sakes alive.” Mama emerged from the back door with Mickey’s complimentary plate of ribs and a broom. “What is all my help doing out here? Here you go, Mick. Nice singing tonight.” She aimed the broom at Nate. “Dishwasher, no slacking off now. Just got you trained up right. Susanna, I’m going to head on home
to tend to your daddy. Can you finish closing and lock up? Avery’s got the front of the house all but done.”

“It’ll cost you overtime pay.”

“How about I let you keep your job?”

“Say, Mama. Nate here hired me to design his daddy’s garden.” Susanna patted Nate’s shoulders, letting her hand slip over the contours of his broad, firm back. Nate leaned ever so slightly into her touch.

“Did he now? Good for you. Get his money up front, Suz.” The screen door banged as Mama returned to the kitchen, her voice filling every glorious pocket of the Shack. “Aves, shug, get finished up and come straight home. School tomorrow.”

“Get his money up front?” Nate looked aghast. “Is she serious?”

“Mama never jokes about money.” Susanna patted his shoulder one last time before pulling her hand away, the threads of his shirt releasing a subtle woodsy scent.

“By George, I do believe I’m offended.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you hired me to do the garden, not Mama.” Susanna collected their empty tumblers. She’d prefer to sit on the deck talking to him all night, but it was time to get to work. “Listen, why don’t you head on home? We’re all done here except for the kitchen checklist and lock up.”

“Are you sure? I can stay to help.”

He was sweet. So very sweet. “Avery and I are old hands. We got it. Ten minutes and we’re out. Go on.”
Before I lean to kiss you
. “You worked hard tonight.”

He removed his apron. “So the garden?”

“I’ll start drawing up formal plans in the morning.”

He slapped his hand to his chest. “Makes me glad.” His smile stole another small chunk of her heart, and when he leaned in to hug her, she curled into his arms. “Good night, Susanna.”

“‘Night, Nate.”

He passed Mickey, complimenting his music, digging change and a few loose bills from his pocket for the tip jar. “Puts me in mind of the old country.”

Mickey acknowledged Nate with a nod, his mouth full of a meaty rib. He didn’t bother to stop the barbecue sauce running down his chin.

“Good night again, Susanna.” Nate stepped toward the front of the deck.

“Good night, Nate.”

She waited on the deck until she heard the rumble of his SUV and saw the glow of taillights disappearing down the road.

And she missed him.

“You like him.”

Susanna snapped around toward Mickey.

“We just met.” She collected Mickey’s plate of gnawed rib bones and pile of used napkins.

“So? You never liked a dude you just met before?” Mickey flicked his last bone onto the plate.

“Mick, I just broke up with Adam.”

“You’re full of excuses. Just admit it. Never saw you with Peters anyway.”

“What is it with people?” Susanna snatched up his tumbler. “Twelve years with a man, and no one manages to tell me what they really think of him? He breaks up with me, and the whole island practically applauds. Do you want a refill?”

“Sweet tea.” Mickey tore open a wet wipe with his teeth. “Oh, hey, take the change from the tip jar. Use it for the jukebox while you close up.”

“I don’t
like
him, Mickey. Not in the way you mean.” Susanna set down the dirty dishes and reached into the jar, fishing out quarters. “Even if I did—which again, I don’t—he lives four bazillion miles away. Across the Atlantic and halfway into the North Sea.”

“So you know where he lives?”

Susanna banged into the kitchen, leaving Mickey and his amusing chuckle on the deck. What did he know? Old Irish-singing coot. He wasn’t even really Irish, for crying out loud.

Placing the dishes by the dishwasher, Susanna checked on Avery and the front of the house. “You almost done?”

“Just have the foyer to mop,” Avery said without looking up, moving the mop evenly across the stained concrete floor. “Then run down the checklist and take out the last of the trash.”

“Mickey gave me change for the jukebox.” Susanna walked to the music machine. “What do you want to hear?”

“Blake Shelton.”

Okay, but first her old favorite. Susanna dropped the first quarter in and punched A10. Patsy Cline singing “Crazy.”

Avery came up behind her and draped her long, slender arms around Susanna’s shoulders. “You doing okay?”

“Crazy, crazy for feeling so lonely …”

“I’m more than okay.” Susanna peered into her sister’s brown eyes. So like Mama’s. Intense but tempered with compassion. “Now tell me which Blake Shelton song.”

“‘God Gave Me You.’” Avery tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and tapped the glass.

Maybe it was the remains of Mickey’s ballads or Patsy’s evocative vocals, but Susanna knew in that moment how much she loved her sister. How baby Avery, the surprise child, had saved them all.

She planted a kiss on her sister’s forehead.

“Hey, what was that for?” Avery raised her chin, pressing her fingers over Susanna’s kiss.

“For being you.”

“Ah, it’s nothing.” Avery flicked her hand and made a face. “It’s easy to be me.” She laughed. “You paved the way, you know.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t really around for you, Aves.” Regret had a certain timeless sting.

“Crazy for feeling so lonely …”

“You were in college, working.”

“I was too focused on Adam.”

“Well, if you want to make it up to me, I saw some great shoes in the mall.”

Susanna laughed. “I bet you did. Here I am being gushy and sentimental, and you work it toward shopping.”

“Whatever. It’s your guilt.” Avery returned to her mop bucket. “I was just giving you options.”

Clever girl. Mama’s daughter for sure. “How about this? You get to pick another song.” Susanna flashed her the last quarter from the jar.

“I’d rather have the shoes.”

“Pick a song.”

“Miranda Lambert. ‘The House That Built Me.’”

Patsy’s voice faded as Susanna searched the song list for “The House That Built Me” and a song she wanted to hear. Maybe something from the eighties.

Blake’s smooth tenor awoke the melody in Susanna’s heart. She hummed along, whispering the lyrics.

She was about to drop the next quarter down the jukebox’s gullet when she noticed something different about the silver piece.

Stepping into the recessed lighting, Susanna examined the coin. It was imprinted with a young man’s profile. A profile she recognized. One she’d sat next to on the back deck ten minutes ago.

Blake sang,
“God gave me you for the ups and downs …”

She flipped the coin over.

Brighton Kingdom. Prince Nathaniel. Quarter pound sterling
.

Nate. She stared at the coin with cold realization. Prince Nathaniel? Nate Kenneth was Prince Nathaniel?

She glanced toward the bathrooms, the kitchen, and the man-eating Dumpster. She’d called him bubba. Mama’d had him Cloroxing toilets. Scrubbing grease traps.

“Suz, what’s wrong?” Avery passed by with the mop and bucket. “You look sick.”

“No, no, I’m … I’m just tired.” She tucked the coin in her pocket. Why didn’t he tell her? “Let’s get finished up, okay?”

Susanna pushed through the kitchen doors, her steam rising. He’d said nothing. Not a word. Even when she scribbled “A King’s Garden” on her sketch pad. When she asked him tonight if they’d met before.

Was he laughing at her? At the family and their countrified Southern ways?

But he was the man who’d come to her aid. Out of the blue. The one who’d run off a vagrant and changed her flat tire, who’d driven her to the hospital and waited all night. Nate had
volunteered
to be Mama’s Rib Shack lackey. He’d asked her to design the cottage’s garden.

It made no sense. What was a Brighton prince doing on St. Simons Island? Susanna finished closing down the kitchen and snapping off lights just as Blake rounded the chorus one last time.

God gave me you …

Brighton, Stratton Palace

L
eo, please rest.” Campbell slipped Friday morning’s
Liberty Press
from her husband’s limp grasp. The headlines would only upset him.

A dark, grainy picture taken through a stand of trees showed a man talking to a woman. It might be Nathaniel. The man bore his resemblance. But it very well might
not
be Nathaniel.

Campbell angled the paper toward the window’s light. The couple in the picture sat on a table of some kind under trickles of light, talking. Nothing more.

But the story proposed that the crown prince was falling in love with an American and testing Brighton law.

Blasted
Liberty Press
. Such an inflammatory story. What had
become of Brighton’s noble paper of truth and record? This story was about nothing more than hearsay and rumor.

The
LibP
’s publisher, Morris Alderman, had protected the princes while they were young, attending school and university. The world barely knew of Brighton’s young royals.

Except for Nathaniel’s debacle with Lady Adel—which even Morris couldn’t contain—the crown prince remained backstage on the world’s tabloid theater.

Until recent months as Leo’s health failed and the end of the entail neared.

From his couch, Leo stirred. “Campbell?”

“What is it, love?” She tucked away the paper and smoothed her hand over her husband’s gaunt, pale expression. The effects of the chemotherapy were evident in his thinning white hair and in the mocking red circles around his once brilliant blue eyes.

“Read … the dailies …” Leo tried to raise his hand. Tried to point to his desk where the Parliament marshal deposited Leo’s government reports each morning.

But in the past few weeks, he had not had the strength to read them.

“Leo, you don’t need to concern yourself with the dailies. Please, dear, rest. Don’t upset yourself.” She’d been reading the dailies, and she knew the news outmanned her husband’s strength.

“What’s upsetting me is your resistance. Please, Campbell, I might be sick but I am still the king. Now retrieve them for me and read.”

Campbell surrendered. As she knew she would. Her whole life was built around her husband, her king, her civic duty. But she offered one last protest.

“Henry is perfectly capable of tending to Brighton’s business while you recuperate.”

“Of course. This is why I called for him to be prime minister.”
Leo tapped his thin chest. “But I am still the king. It is my duty …” His voice faltered with weariness and frustration. “To know what is happening … in Brighton Kingdom.”

“As you wish.” Campbell crossed the room and retrieved his beloved dailies. She supposed it steadied him. To continue his routines. To stay his hand on his duties.

Leukemia had withered the once vital man, but no disease could diminish his devotion to Brighton. Being King Leopold V was the very essence of his person.

“I’ll read, but you drink your broth.” Campbell pulled a chair around to the couch bed where Leo reclined. A wash of morning light brightened the room, and she was grateful July came to Brighton with more sun than rain. “You need to keep up your strength.”

She examined the dailies folders, purposefully choosing the government’s social diary rather than a report on the economy. Or worse, speculation on the end of the 1914 entailment with Hessenberg.

Leo supported a European Union court for upholding the entail when Hessenberg lawyers petitioned for it to be dissolved, despite the implications to Brighton’s economy.

But he’d endured vicious slander in the papers. Now it was Nathaniel’s turn.

Oh, what had Nathaniel I and Prince Francis been thinking when they orchestrated that requirement in the entail? That royal families would magically live on and on even if dispersed across Europe for a century?

Campbell shifted her glance briefly from the dailies to her dying husband. Oh, Leo … what would they all do without his wisdom? “Campbell? I’m eating my broth, but you are not reading.”

“Yes, right, well, let’s see.” She scanned the briefings on the social daily. “The finalist for future G8 Summit locations has
been announced. Well, isn’t this grand … Cathedral City made the list.” Campbell checked for Leo’s reaction. But his eyes were closed. His breath was quick and shallow. And he’d fallen asleep.

Leo. The lion. The stalwart man who captured the people’s hearts, and hers, with his charm and athleticism, his confidence and valor in diplomacy.

He was too young to die at fifty-eight. But, oh, he remained a roaring lion, this one.

Rest, Leo
. Campbell gathered up the dailies, renewing her will to be strong. For Leo. For her boys. For Brighton.

After tuning the radio to the classical station, she walked through the palace apartment to her office. She’d read the dailies over tea.

The brightness of the Queen’s Office on the south side of Stratton Palace cheered her. The modern décor with accents from the Old World and monuments to the queens before her was her own design.

This room, with her assistants aiding her in correspondence and her diary schedule, was more than home to her. It was where she found her purpose. Where she understood why she married Leo.

Campbell perched on a cushioned window seat and stared through the white sheers to the thin line where a blue heaven kissed the green earth.

That would all change soon. Not just when summer gave way to fall and fall to winter, but her place in it. She’d been “Her Royal Highness” for thirty-four years. The wife of the crown prince, then the king. Mother of princes. A champion for their customs, as well as for change and charity. She’d miss her public persona when he died. But above all, she’d miss growing old with the man she’d married. Once she’d committed to him, to the marriage, she’d given her whole heart. Never looking back.

But this summer, she knew her world teetered when Leo
refused their annual trip to the country house, Parrsons. He wasn’t feeling “up to it.” Seeing him retreat from life forced her to take stock of the days ahead.

When he died, she’d become the dowager queen. At fifty-six. The papers would write, “Dowager Queen Campbell Visited the Schools Today.”

Yet she felt like a schoolgirl herself. A slow-moving one, with more aches and pains this year than the last, but a schoolgirl nonetheless.

“Campbell?” The prime minister pressed through her door.

“Henry?” She locked up her emotions in her heart and greeted him. “Please come in.”

“How is he?” Henry shook her hand as he offered a slight bow.

“This last chemo treatment has taken all of his strength.” Campbell motioned for Henry to take the seat next to her desk.

“We’re prepared for whatever comes our way, Campbell.” He waited for her to walk around her desk and sit before taking the chair she offered.

“We? Who is we, Henry? The government?” She fidgeted with the buttons on her jacket sleeve.

“Yes, the government. The King’s Office. I daresay even the people.”

“But I am not ready, Henry,” she said, firing her words with precision. “I daresay neither is Nathaniel. Nor Stephen.”

Henry remained steady. Calm. “Nathaniel is stronger than you know.” He motioned to the copy of the
LibP
on her desk. “You’ve seen the story?”

“I have and it’s nothing but rubbish. Nathaniel’s not been gone a fortnight and the paper announces he’s in love? Last week they wagered he’d be engaged to Lady Genevieve. This week, it’s an American lass. Are they trying to paint him as unstable? Unable to ascend the throne?”

“Your Majesty,” Henry began with a formal compassion,
“these stories are not about truth. They are about speculation. About casting aspersions. It sells papers. Of course, we can’t discount Morris Alderman’s editorials calling for an independent Hessenberg and the demand to free up Brighton from decades of bailing them out of their financial woes.”

Campbell’s raw emotions were displayed by her firm hand against the smooth grain of her two-hundred-year-old desk. “The entailment cannot be changed just because we don’t like what our forefathers did. The European Court denied Hessenberg’s petition for it to be abolished.”

“Your Majesty, I’m on your side. Hessenberg’s side. Brighton’s side. Above all, the law’s side.”

“Please, Henry, call me Campbell.” He’d been her friend long before she became queen. Now more than ever, she needed her friends. “So what do we do?”

“Nothing, really, other than to get the King’s Office to make a statement about the crown prince’s marriage intentions.”

“I know his mum would like to know of his intentions.” Marriage for a royal heir wasn’t an option. It was a must. Leo’s failing health highlighted more than ever the need for Nathaniel, or Stephen, to produce an heir. To carry on Leo’s legacy.

Henry’s exhale collapsed him against the back of his chair. “We might accomplish two feats in one, you realize. We can solve the end of the entail requirement for a descendant of Prince Francis to take the throne and Nathaniel’s marriage question.”

“You speak of Lady Genevieve?”

“She’s a descendant of Prince Francis.” Henry shrugged, casting his dignified features with indifference.

“But she’s not royalty.” Leo would never stand for it, Campbell felt certain.

“My dear Campbell, there is no one in the duchy’s royal line at the moment. Genevieve is a noble. Daughter of a lord. A lady in her own right. Nathaniel marries her, styles her a royal princess,
and like that”—he snapped his fingers—“she becomes a princess and a Hessen duchess.”

Campbell exhaled, conceding Henry’s point. Beautiful, educated Lady Genevieve
would
make an excellent wife for Nathaniel. An Olympic champion, she owned a successful public relations firm. She’d make a most excellent queen. As well as grand duchess of Hessenberg.

Brightonians loved her. Hessens loved her.

“Campbell? What are you thinking?”

“That Nathaniel must consider marrying Ginny. They’ve been friends for years. Perhaps even more than friends in one season or another. She would be a good match for him, don’t you think? Keep him on his toes.” Perhaps if Leo awoke from his nap feeling strong, she’d broach the subject with him.

“Yes, but it’s up to him. Did you fancy someone telling you who to love? Whom to marry?” The blue glint in his eyes dimmed.

“I didn’t see the wisdom at the time, no. But now?” She gripped her hands together at her waist. What right did Henry have to walk in here and bring up past history?

“It’s the twenty-first century, Campbell. No one can tell the prince whom to marry. It’s not good for the monarchy.”

Campbell picked up the newspaper, turning the image of the supposed prince and his American date toward Henry. “But we can tell him whom not to marry.”

“Let’s reserve that judgment until we know more.” Henry stood for a closer look. “I can’t even say for certain it’s the prince.”

Campbell wanted to agree, but even in the shadows, she knew it was Nathaniel. But her son’s heart was not so easily won. She took comfort in that notion. Genevieve certainly hadn’t captured his fancy after years of friendship. Certainly this girl did not win his affection in mere days. She lowered the paper to her lap.

“Henry, can you believe our grandparents were babies, perhaps not even born, when the entailment was signed?”

“It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“And when the war ended, no one cared about leases and entailments. The two North Sea nations were happy to have survived, clinging to one another like twin cousins. Glowering at Britain and Germany for the suffering we endured.”

“But now people do care. The EU cares.” Henry pressed forward in his chair, his bold countenance bending, revealing his concern for the kingdom’s position. “If we find no royal heir to Prince Francis, a nation disappears from the face of the earth. The end of an ancient nation. The Grand Duchy Hessenberg becomes Province Hessenberg of Brighton.”

“Are you for it, Henry? The province?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want, or you, or Leo, or the nation. It matters what the entail dictates. I fear repercussions if we try to modify the statutes through parliamentary procedure. It sets a bad legal precedent. Call me a coward, but I believe the entailment must play out as designed. An heir must be present for their independence even if Brighton struggles in the midst. I’m ready to lead us through this as prime minister. If we start meddling, Campbell …,” he sighed, “who knows what trouble we’ll unearth.” He held her glance for a moment. “We could lose the monarchy. Lose everything we know and love about Brighton, our way of life …”

“Henry, you make it sound as if we could be destroyed.”

“From the inside out. Yes. We could end up with a very different government and a very different Brighton, Campbell.”

“But you won’t let that happen, will you?”

“I’m doing all I can to keep the ship moving forward without stalling in the political waters. But I need Nathaniel on deck, doing his part. His youth is over.”

“You think he should marry Lady Genevieve?”

Henry sighed as he stood and walked over to the windows. “It would make things very smooth indeed. But I can’t ask him
to marry a woman he doesn’t love.” He glanced back at her, and Campbell glimpsed the burden Henry carried so graciously.

“Shall we call Nathaniel home? What do you need him to do? PR with Hessenberg? Speak of how they are and always will be a great people. How Brighton cares and will make the most of our permanent partnership?”

“No need. Leave him be. Like I said, his youth is ending. This may be his last carefree holiday for a while. We can expect more bawdy speculation in the press. More hearsay and rumors. News he’s engaged to an American followed by a call to end the entail because the crown prince intends to break the Brighton marriage act. Bookmakers publishing odds of whom he’ll marry and when. There will be stories about abolishing the monarchy, calling for a republic to be formed.”