A March Bride (A Year of Weddings 1 #4)(3)
And if she ran out of money before the semester’s end, she cut Friday classes, drove home, and worked nonstop all weekend.
“. . . on our last day we determined to take in as much skiing as possible.” Nigel geared up from storyteller to entertainer. “We’d spent all day on the slopes, you see. Our boy Nathaniel here was the most determined to ski the day away, like a man facing a life sentence or some such.”
“He was set upon graduation to enter the Royal Fusiliers as an infantryman like all the crown princes before him,” Michael said.
Susanna knew about his military days. Nathaniel was quite proud of serving his country. He’d even briefly served during the war with the Royal Fusiliers Intelligence Corps.
“So this holiday was his last as a free man.”
“I was born a crown prince,” Nathaniel said to his glass more than to his friends. “I’ve never been a free man.”
Susanna leaned to see his expression. What happened to the man of confidence and security who’d come to embrace his divine destiny?
He’d been at great peace over his calling as a king. So why the snarky comment?
When his gaze met hers, she smiled, searching for the teasing glint he reserved just for her beneath his blue eyes.
He nodded to her and she waited for that tug to appear on the side of his lips when he wanted to kiss her in public but couldn’t.
However, his eyes did not twinkle, nor did his lips twist.
She could live with his dull eyes and sober expression, but she could not live without his look of love. The one that sparked a warm twinge of lover’s passion. The one that made her tremble with longing when he kissed her.
For well over a month now, she’d missed his tender glances and wooing warm words. Yes, he’d been busy, traveling, distracted and distant with his kingly duties. But when they were alone, he remained distant. Lost in a world she could not enter.
Their typically lively and deep conversations were now of mundane things like a late winter snow or the unusual prediction of sun and refreshing temperatures in early March.
Nathaniel no longer spoke about their dreams, hopes, and plans.
“So there he is, love. Susanna, are you getting this?” Nigel nudged her again, catching an eye from Nathaniel. “Pardon, I see your fiancé didn’t take kindly to me calling you love or my elbow in your ribs. Anyway—”
“If you’re going to tell the story, Nigel, tell it,” Nathaniel said, gruff and irritated.
“Mate, you can’t deny me the luxury of milking this fabulous story.”
“Go on,” Susanna said, reaching out to set her champagne flute on a tray carried by a black-tie server. “I’d like to hear this.”
“So there we are, having a grand time. Nathaniel is flying down this slope, I mean flying.” Nigel crouched down into a skiing position. “It’s a fantastic hill and a fantastic run. There he is at jet speed when a bear—a big, blasted black bear—ambles out of the woods right onto the run.”
“Hungry. Just out of hibernation.” Nathaniel came a bit more alive. Nigel’s storytelling had a way of turning off the silence and chasing away the blues. Even in Nathaniel. “He looked square at me like I’m his lunch, heaven sent.”
“The lot of us are right behind him, pulling up, skiing off to the side,” Michael said.
“In the meantime”—Morton’s laugh was low and cool, the sound of a stuffy blueblood—“we’re watching our friend and crown prince ski to his death.”
“You should’ve seen it from my vantage point,” Nathaniel said. “I’ve nowhere to go but into the trees, square into the beast, or off the side of the mountain.”
“And people tell me surfing is dangerous,” Susanna said, laughing, finally feeling a bit more at ease, realizing it wasn’t the garden making her uncomfortable but Nathaniel’s surly silence toward her.
He regrets his proposal. What else could it be? Enough. She’d confront him the moment they were alone.
Theirs had not been the easiest of engagements. Not only were they blending lives and hearts, getting to know one another as a couple, but they were blending cultures and expectations, all before the eyes of the world.
Most of the adjusting fell on her shoulders because she wasn’t merely marrying a man, but a king. She wasn’t getting to know just a new family but one with deep roots in ancient European history.
She wasn’t just learning the ins and outs of her new country, but a whole different way of life.
And the press . . . nothing can prepare one for the press. Behind Duchess Kate in the United Kingdom, Susanna was now the most photographed woman in the world. She found it exhausting.
“We’re yelling for him to stop, but he keeps plowing down the hill,” Nigel said.
“I couldn’t stop, ole chap.”
“Then we start debating,” Nigel went on. “ ‘Who’s going to tell the king? And shall we say his son died bravely, doing what he loved?’ ”
“Fine lot, that, having me dead before seeing my great plan of escape.” Nathaniel broke out of his somberness with a heartfelt laugh.
“What’s all the hilarity? I wasn’t invited?” The raven-haired beauty, Lady Genevieve Hawthorne, boldly inserted herself into the group as a spark of jealousy ignited a prickly heat in Susanna.