Catherine rushed through her last exam of the semester, eager to get out of the hot, stuffy classroom she and her classmates were in. As she walked to the front of the classroom to hand in her test, she glanced out the window and tried to find the familiar black car waiting for her, like it had been the past few weeks. She smiled when she didn’t see it; ‘Seb,’ she thought to herself and shook her head. He’d been on time ever since that first day, when he was a few minutes late. They’d already grown closer than she and her last driver, who had been more of a fatherly, no, grandfatherly figure to her. Seb was kind of like that boy next door, that friend you could get into all sorts of trouble with; Cat had never had anyone like that before.
“Have a nice summer Miss Catherine,” her professor said quietly, smiling up at her from his desk.
“I told you, please call me Cat,” she whispered back.
“I’m sorry, but you’re father wants me to call you Miss Catherine,” he whispered back, glancing at the other students still taking exams.
“Whatever,” Cat sighed and put her text on his desk and got out of the classroom as fast as she could. She rushed down the stairs and opened the door to the sunshine. Cat skipped down the last few steps to the sidewalk and was about to sit down on the steps to wait for her driver when she saw him step out of a sleek black car.
“What is that?” Cat asked and her mouth dropped open in shock and amusement.
“It’s a Ferrari,” Seb replied smugly with the smile of a kid who’s been given whatever he wanted in a candy shop. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
Cat walked over to the car and ran her hand along the edge of it. “Does my dad know you have this?”
Seb chuckled. “Yes, he paid for it. I told him I needed a faster car to get you around.”
Cat starred back at him in shock. “My father bought this?”
“Yeah, he said the old Lincoln needed to be replaced anyway, so he let me pick the car. I was kind of joking when I showed him this one, but he liked it,” He smiled and looked back at the car to admire its sleek black curves
Slowly, a smile spread across Cat’s face that almost matched Seb’s. “How fast does it go?”
Seb smiled mischievously and bit his lip, “Want to see?”
After nearly getting whiplash several times, Cat was glad when Seb pulled the car to a stop in a parking lot. It took her a few minutes to catch her breath after the exhilarating ride and her driver watched her carefully. Mostly, he was concerned that he’d scared her, but he was also worried that she’d get sick- and that was not happening in this brand new car!
“Too fast? Too many corners? What’s wrong?” He turned to face her, trying to judge her reaction, but her face was unreadable.
“Well, Sebastian, the crab, first I have to say that this is the first time I’ve ridden in the front seat with my driver,” Cat looked back at him with a hint of a smile until they both started laughing, and glanced back at the lack of back seat in the small two-seat car. “However, that was also probably the fastest I’ve ever been in a car; that was almost like a rollercoaster.”
“So that was nicht gut,” Sebastian replied, and when Cat gave him a confused look, he corrected himself. “That was not good?”
“It wasn’t bad but….” Cat stared at him for a moment until it hit her. “You’re German!”
Seb laughed awkwardly, “Yes, I’m German, I thought you knew.”
“That’s cool; I’ve been to Germany a few times, it’s very beautiful. We went to Berlin for a while for something with Dad’s work, and we stayed somewhere in the Alps one winter to go skiing. I liked the Alps much better than I liked Berlin, it was kind of…”
“Boring?” Seb suggested and Cat nodded. “Yeah, for someone like you, Berlin would probably not be very fun. It still has a lot of eastern influences, but it has a historical aspect to it.”
“Which part are you from?” Cat asked.
“Kind of south-west, it’s very close to France,” he tried to explain, picturing a map of Germany in his head, and Cat nodded, though she wasn’t that familiar with Germany’s geography.
“France? I like France a lot,” Cat’s face lit up as she recalled the fun memories of staying in Paris with her Grandmother, and the South of France in the winter.
Seb glanced at his watch. “I should be getting you home. You have to be somewhere at 8 tonight.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me of that. I hate going to balls!” Cat pushed herself back in her seat more and braced herself as the car started moving again.
Seeing this, Seb laughed, “Don’t worry, I’ll drive a little more carefully. And what do you hate about it? I thought girls liked getting dressed up.”
“It’s not that, though that does get annoying after a while. It’s because I, um,” Cat paused. “I never have a date.”
“What? Why not? A pretty girl like you can’t get a date?”
“I’m not allowed to,” Cat rolled her eyes and Seb glanced at her as he slowed to pull in to their gated driveway. He stopped long enough to type in the gate code before accelerating thought the barely open gates. “Dad’s really strict about that kind of stuff. He’s tried to set me up with some diplomat’s son, or the grandson of one of the Kennedy’s, or the nephew of a Duke or an Earl, people I’m not at all interested in.”
“He’s just trying to protect you,” Seb replied, with no enthusiasm behind his words. As much as he wanted to do whatever his new employer wanted, he didn’t exactly understand why a 21 year old girl wasn’t allowed to date.
“I’ve gotten pretty good at sneaking out, or saying I’m out with friends, when I’m actually hooking up with some guy,” Cat flashed a mischievous smile as she gathered her purse and school bag before getting out of the car. “Will you be driving me tonight?” Cat leaned over and looked in the open passenger-side window.
“Yes, but probably not in this,” he pointed toward the Ferrari, which he was still sitting in, engine idling. “Whatever I’m driving, I’ll be here at 7:30.”
Cat waved goodbye and skipped up the marble steps that led to the front door. Before she could get her keys out to unlock it, the heavy oak door swung open.
“Miss Catherine, your father is waiting for you in the study,” Gibbons, an impossibly uptight British butler, said in his impeccable accent. Gibbons had come stateside with Cat’s father in the 1980s when he moved his international corporation to New York City from London, and Cat has tried countless times to make him smile, or break somehow. But he was always that same calm, polite, gentleman who attended to his employers every need.
“There you are Catherine,” her father said in his slightly less impeccable accent. He was from a different part of England than Gibbons, or maybe Gibbons had learned the proper upper class British accent in ‘Butler School’ or wherever he came from. Actually, Cat’s father had what is commonly called a cockney accent, and his background matched the traits most associated with it (i.e. lower class), and this was something he reminded Cat of every chance he got.
“What’s up?” Cat sat in the seat across from him and slouched.
“Sit up, it’s bad for your spine to sit like that. I just wanted to ask if you would mind being the date of one of the European diplomat’s sons tonight,” he asked casually, as if it wasn’t a big deal. And to Cat, it wasn’t, since she’d done this a dozen times before.
“Do I really have a choice?” Cat asked, looking up from her phone.
“You always have a choice, Catherine, but he really is a fine young gentleman, I don’t see why you could object,” her father gave her one of those looks that said ‘you’re doing this,’ and she sighed.
“Fine,” she rolled out of the chair she was slumped in and started to leave the study.
“Mlle. Charlotte will be here soon to do your hair, so go take a shower,” her father shouted after her, as if she was still a child.
After an hour of getting her hair pulled and pinned and curled, and having her eyes poked with mascara, Cat was finally able to put on her dress and look in the mirror. She’d been fitted for the dress several weeks before and had already forgotten what was supposed to look like, so she was genuinely surprised when she stood in front of the mirror and saw a beautiful princess staring back at her. She looked like something out of a Disney movie, and Cat loved it.
“Tres belle, you just need a prince charming,” Mlle. Charlotte said with her thick French accent as she admired Cat in the mirror.
And then, as if on cue, Gibbons knocked on the door gently and informed Cat that her ride had arrived and was waiting for her. Still caught up in the idea of the beautiful dress, Cat half expected to see Seb driving a horse drawn carriage. However, when she emerged from the front door and began descending the marble steps, she found Seb standing next to a different shiny black car: a Rolls-Royce Phantom. He opened the back door for her, like a proper chauffeur, and put on his black hat before getting in the driver’s seat.
“Wait, you’re on the wrong side,” Cat said, with a twinge of terror in her voice.
“Yes, this is a British car, your father had it imported from his home country and he insisted it ‘look proper.’ I don’t mind though, I’ve driven all sorts of cars,” he smiled back at her in the rear-view mirror and she slowly relaxed, realizing there was actually nothing wrong. “You look very beautiful tonight Miss Catherine, if I may say that.”
Cat found herself blushing, and it surprised her. She got compliments often enough, but they were normally cordial, polite, conversational pieces; she’d never actually considered the thought that someone thought she looked beautiful, or even mildly attractive. “Thank you, and don’t call me that,” she laughed and he smiled back at her.
“You look like Cinderella. You know, when she went to the ball,” Seb glanced back at her in the mirror again and she bit her lip. This was the second time someone had called her a princess, and it only reminded her that she didn’t know who her prince charming was for the night.
But she would meet him soon enough, for he was already at the ball. His mother, the European diplomat, had talked him into coming because he would get to have a beautiful young girl as a date, and that was something he liked: beautiful girls. He watched the cars as they came up the driveway and stopped in front of the grand staircase that led up to the entrance of the ball, watching for his date.
Someone nudged his shoulder and pointed to a car that had just come around the bend. “That’s her father’s car, she’s in the one behind.” His eyes quickly shifted from the white limo that apparently held her father, to the black Phantom that followed it. As the limo drove away and the black car took its place at the foot of the stairs, he walked to the top of the short flight of steps. The driver got out of the right side of the car, which was a bit of a surprise, but he thought nothing of it. He was focused on the girl emerging from the back seat, and he completely ignored the chauffeur standing next to her opened door.
“Are you my date tonight?” She asked as she gathered herself after getting out of the car. She looked up at the man dressed in a white military uniform and he nodded. “I guess I’ve found my prince charming after all.” She laughed as she said this and began walking up the steps toward him. But after climbing two steps, she tripped. She was only three steps from the top, so her date moved closer to help her, while at the bottom of the steps, her driver rushed forward to catch her. However, all Cat noticed was the man in white catching her before she fell flat on her face. Seb slowly walked back to the car and, before taking one last glance at Cat and her date, he climbed in the driver’s seat and drove away. He tried not to, but he watched the pair glide off toward the ballroom, arm in arm.