Beauty and the Beastly Wedding: Book Two in the Grottenville Series

By Annemarie Elstner

The conniving yet quite stupid Queen Holandasia, her even sillier son Prince William, the intelligent and beautiful Princess Clarabella, Snootenville the royal and oh-so-sarcastic butler, and all the strange palace staff of Grottenville return in this second Grottenville book.

Prince William and Princess Clarabella are officially engaged. The palace of Grottenville is in a buzz and a flurry, what with all the wedding plans and preparations. Queen Holandasia is insistent on a Hawaiian menu, tomato red drapes, and a pineapple wedding cake! Princess Clarabella is secretly wishing that her future mother-in-law would just disappear.

To add to the buzz and flurry, Princess Clarabellas parents King Engelbert and Queen Bertha arrive at the door of Grottenville palace. Snootenville the butler is his usual sarcastic self but is secretly quite excited about the pending union, as the princess comes from a very wealthy kingdom, and this could mean great benefits to all the staff. Grottenville is still in severe economic decline, and a marriage between poor Prince William and rich Princess Clarabella will definitely fix all of that. Everyone is dreaming of new velvet drapes, soft cuddly slippers, and pots of steaming hot tea!

But what strange illness has suddenly befallen Queen Holandasia? What are the strange eerie cries echoing down the dark dismal passages of Grottenville palace? Is the upcoming wedding cursed by some strange evil lurking in the palace hallways?

Lots of surprises and snorts, hiccups and howls, and lies and laughter fill the pages of Beauty and the Beastly Wedding. Have fun with the delightful, quirky, and sometimes absolutely awful Grottenville royalty; servants; and, of course, our new arrivals, the not-so-easily convinced King Engelbert and his very trusting, loving wife Queen Bertha with her purple hair and excellent massage techniques. And like all good stories, learn a moral or two and even some brilliant handy hints! A very entertaining read for young and old alike. Enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Aug 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481799669

Annemarie Elstner

Author Annemarie Elstner is a musician, teacher, and storyteller. Since the birth of her daughter, Toni-Marie, she has kept her little girl amused with silly bedtime stories. Up until the beginning of 2012, all the author’s stories had been inside her head and not on paper and accessible to other mothers, fathers, and children. Her daughter sweetly said, “Mommy, you are really good. You should be a writer!” And so Annemarie Elstner proceeded to take the stories from her head and write them down. The author has always been a very creative person. She sings and plays the piano and writes her own songs. She also performs in a jazz duo, hosts her own music show Velvet and Stone, and teaches music classes. But when she is with her daughter, who is definitely her muse, the stories just come pouring out. Annemarie Elstner stays in a little cottage next to a mountain just outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is a beautiful place, peaceful and calming to the spirit, an ideal spot to allow the creative gifts within to flow. The author is currently working on her third Grottenville book and illustrations. Keep a lookout for book three in The Grottenville Series, The Legend of Sleepy Horror. About the Book (for the back cover) The conniving yet quite stupid Queen Holandasia, her even sillier son Prince William, the intelligent and beautiful Princess Clarabella, Snootenville the royal and oh-so-sarcastic butler, and all the strange palace staff of Grottenville return in this second Grottenville book. Prince William and Princess Clarabella are officially engaged. The palace of Grottenville is in a buzz and a flurry, what with all the wedding plans and preparations. Queen Holandasia is insistent on a Hawaiian menu, tomato red drapes, and a pineapple wedding cake! Princess Clarabella is secretly wishing that her future mother-in-law would just disappear. To add to the buzz and flurry, Princess Clarabella’s parents King Engelbert and Queen Bertha arrive at the door of Grottenville palace. Snootenville the butler is his usual sarcastic self but is secretly quite excited about the pending union, as the princess comes from a very wealthy kingdom, and this could mean great benefits to all the staff. Grottenville is still in severe economic decline, and a marriage between poor Prince William and rich Princess Clarabella will definitely fix all of that. Everyone is dreaming of new velvet drapes, soft cuddly slippers, and pots of steaming hot tea! But what strange illness has suddenly befallen Queen Holandasia? What are the strange eerie cries echoing down the dark dismal passages of Grottenville palace? Is the upcoming wedding cursed by some strange evil lurking in the palace hallways? Lots of surprises and snorts, hiccups and howls, and lies and laughter fill the pages of Beauty and the Beastly Wedding. Have fun with the delightful, quirky, and sometimes absolutely awful Grottenville royalty; servants; and, of course, our new arrivals, the not-so-easily convinced King Engelbert and his very trusting, loving wife Queen Bertha with her purple hair and excellent massage techniques. And like all good stories, learn a moral or two and even some brilliant handy hints! A very entertaining read for young and old alike. Enjoy!

Book preview

© 2013 by Annemarie Elstner. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/05/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-9965-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-9966-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

About the Author

This book is dedicated to my daughter.

My muse. My inspiration.

Introduction

T O ALL MY dear readers who missed our first Grottenville book, The Princess and the Pinkie Nail , please read this brief introduction so as to fill yourself in on the happenings in Grottenville.

Queen Holandasia is extremely concerned about the poverty, gloominess, and oh-so-very-dreary state of her kingdom—the so-called royal kingdom of Grottenville. All that is required is a marriage between her son Prince William and Princess Petunia of Petulasia, a wealthy kingdom with great tourist trade, rolling hills, and sunshine. But the prince is just not interested at all.

One dark and stormy night, a mysterious girl turns up at the Grottenville palace doors. The very unimpressed and extremely sarcastic royal butler, Snootenville, opens the palace doors to this bedraggled-looking stranger. Convinced the girl is a mere peasant taking a fat chance, he drags her to the royal kitchen.

But finally, the girl is presented to the queen, where she announces that she is, in fact, Princess Clarabella of Muchmoridian, an even richer and more splendid kingdom than Petulasia. The queen does a quick calculation in her head and sums up the advantages of Prince William marrying this mysterious girl. Oh, how nice it would be to have new drapes, new ball gowns, a new fluffy white poodle, and satellite TV! But the queen is also afraid of being the laughing stock of all of Grottenville.

Queen Holandasia puts Princess Clarabella through the most gruelling and absolutely ridiculous test of all time, the Ultimate Princess Authenticity Test, to prove the girl’s royal identity.

To learn more about this gruelling test, you should read The Princess and the Pinkie Nail—a story that is filled with lies and deceit, laughter and giggles, and sighs and slurps and will definitely keep you very entertained. If, however, you would prefer to just get on with the story, I will tell you that the princess did, in fact, pass the test.

Queen Holandasia was not entirely satisfied with the result and made the princess sleep on a pile of eighty-five futons (a special mattress that is very good for your back)! The queen placed her broken pinkie nail underneath the very first futon, as I am sure you know all about the pea that was placed under one hundred mattresses… Oh, you want to know why she used her fingernail and not a pea? Grottenville was such a poor kingdom that the queen could not afford vegetables!

Anyway, let’s not get side-tracked. The following morning, the princess’s disastrous appearance convinced Queen Holandasia that this young girl was, indeed, the real deal, although the girl had not exactly slept on this strange futon bed. Once again, if curiosity kicks in to what she really did that night, read the first book.

The engagement between Prince William of Grottenville and Princess Clarabella of Muchmoridian is finally announced. The most royal of royal weddings is looming.

And so our story continues…

A S THE SUN rose in the rather dreary kingdom of Grottenville, a very grumpy princess—the beautiful and rich Princess Clarabella, that is—woke up. Normally at such a time, she would be sent a silver tray on which would rest an exquisitely handcrafted pottery mug which bore the inscription, I am not a morning person ! and the mug would be filled with rich aromatic Turkish coffee that her Uncle Gilbert, the royal duke of Cappucinian, not only grew but also harvested and ground for export to Turkey, where it was re-ground and sent back to him baring the label of Turkish coffee… Mmmm, I know, a bit silly really.

So we have to agree that Princess Clarabella, lying under rather dusty sheets in the Grottenville royal palace, was not a happy puppy. She had no purple silk bedspread, no morning newspaper, and no coffee, just the shrill ringing of the breakfast bell downstairs, and that was not even for the royalty in the palace. No, that was just for the staff! Ridiculous, she thought to herself, when I marry Prince William, there are definitely going to be some changes around here. And on this thought, she flung back the bedspread, or should we rather say old holey dog blanket, as that is what it really was, and she leapt out of the bed landing slap bang on a rusty nail and let out a horrible shriek, frightening a little white mouse out of its wits. The princess’s shriek, a sound the staff was getting used to by now, echoed down the dark and dingy passageways.

She managed to bathe herself in a little enamel basin and slipped into one of her future mother-in-law’s caftans, one of the hippy ones with bright orange petunias on it. Looking a bit drowned in the rather large