Chapter Nine: Moonlit Garden
"Oh, bother the rules. Let's have another drink!" Catherine was eagerly reaching for the silver brandy flask, and fumbling to unscrew the cap. She'd already gotten young Milton away from his friends at the dance, and now she was going to uncover the truth about what really happened to his roommate Paul Atherton!
"You're not like any girl I've ever met, Catherine. You're wild!" Milton Smalls was a hulking brute, the star of the school football team. Yet while slim, elegant Catherine was leaning against a marble column in the school garden, and drinking from his flask, all he could do was gape at her, as though she were an angel just down from heaven.
"Well . . . I think you're a true gentleman, Milton." Catherine hiccupped loudly. She swayed towards him enticingly, pretending to hand back the flask. But she slipped it into her reticule instead. "I'll take my oath you've never lured a young lady into the garden in your life! But I'll wager Paul Atherton came out here all the time. I've heard no young lady was safe around him!" Gazing up at Milton, Catherine fluttered her long lashes, just to show how grateful she was to be in the company of a true gentleman.
"Pretty girls made a fuss over him," Milton grumbled, "but he was a skinny runt! I could have broken him in two."
"Yes, I can totally see that. You're so very strong and handsome, almost like a Greek god! But as for Paul, pitiful Paul, was there ever one pretty girl in particular?"
"You're a pretty girl," the big brute declared. Something seemed to snap as he crushed Catherine in a bruising embrace. She squealed and struggled, alarmed yet not truly afraid. But just as he was clumsily kissing her lips someone grabbed him from behind, a powerful hand seizing his shoulder in an iron grip.
"Back inside, big fellow," said a firm voice. It was an adult male talking. "Before the school headmaster notices you're missing."
"Huh?" Milton was not a bad lad at heart, but he didn't like being told what to do. He whirled about, almost stumbling on his unsteady feet, and swung his massive fist at the intruder. Catherine couldn't quite see how it happened, but somehow the blow missed completely. Milton howled as his opponent neatly sidestepped and then kicked him in the behind, sending him scrambling up the flower-lined path that led to the school.
"Off you go, lad. Back to your books!"
"You!" Catherine felt dizzy, as though the moonlit garden were whirling like a penny pinwheel. But it wasn't just the brandy that had her head spinning. It was frustration. Overbearing and dictatorial, her legal guardian always insisted on turning up at exactly the wrong moment.
"Lady Cleveland said I could find you here. I see you've been enjoying yourself." Thomas Culpepper's stern face and clipped manner of speech were a far cry from the worshipful adoration and boyish approval Catherine had been basking in all night. "Come on, it's time little girls were in bed. You'll have a hell of a headache tomorrow morning."
"Don't talk to me that way!" Catherine's temper was a keg of gunpowder, ready to explode at the slightest spark. When Culpepper took her arm in polite, gentlemanly fashion she yanked free at once. "Do you ever try to see things from my point of view? Do you have any idea why I'm here or how hard I've been working? Lady Cleveland is my oldest, dearest friend. She begged me to come to London because a friend of hers is in terrible trouble, accused of a crime he didn't commit. I've been searching for clues everywhere, and I was ever so close to getting some real answers when you came along and ruined everything!"
"You're here because you're a silly little fool without even a speck of common sense, and when I came along you were ever so close to getting very badly hurt and losing everything!" Culpepper's quiet voice bit like steel. His blue eyes glittered like lightning. "You've had a drop too much to drink, my dear. I don't think you understand just how dangerous that was, or how far things had gone. That boy was on the very edge of losing control."
"And you never lose control! I'm not clever enough, not grown up enough, not good enough. And no matter how hard I try . . ." Catherine felt as though she were about to say something that would make Thomas Culpepper wake up at last. She wanted him to see her as she really was, a woman and not a child. But when she tried to make him see that side of her the words got stuck. The truth about her feelings just wouldn't come out of her mouth.
Instead she suddenly found herself falling at Culpepper's feet, and being violently sick all over the school's prize rose bushes.
