MY RUIN: In Love With My Step-Uncle-Chapter 47 - Forty-Seven: Marble Bust

//CLARA//

We were being idiots. Absolute, verifiable, gilded age-level morons. We crept down the corridor like criminals fleeing a crime scene.

I was tiptoeing down the west corridor, my navy silk skirts bunched in my fists like a football to keep them from rustling, and I was giggling. Not a graceful, Eleanor-like titter. A full-on, breathless snort that I had to bury in my shoulder.

Beside me, Casimir was speed-walking like a man who had never once in his life needed to be quiet, completely oblivious to the fact that his boots were announcing our presence to the entire corridor.

"Shh!" I hissed, leaning into him as we rounded the corner near the portrait gallery. "You’re stomping like a draft horse. You’re literally vibrating the floorboards."

"I am not stomping," he whispered back, his face flushed and his eyes dancing with a wild, frantic sort of fun I hadn’t seen before. "I am walking. There is a structural difference."

"The chandeliers are rattling, Casimir. If the Ming vase falls over, I’m telling everyone you were chasing a bat."

We slipped further down the corridor, both of us shaking with suppressed laughter.

The evidence of our washroom escapade was drying on my thigh, my gown was ruined beyond repair, and my hair looked like I’d been dragged backward through a hedge. Casimir’s coat was wrinkled beyond saving, his collar askew, and there was a distinct red mark on his palm where my teeth had been.

He caught my eye and grinned. Like a boy who’d just stolen something precious and gotten away with it.

"Stop looking at me like that," I whispered.

"Like what?"

"Like you’re about to do it again."

His grin widened. "That’s not a look. That’s a promise."

"We need to get to my room," I hissed, rolling my eyes. "Before someone—"

I barely got the words out before a sharp, rhythmic clack-clack-clack of heels echoed from the far end of the hall. Then came the voice—that high-pitched, nasal tone that usually signals the end of all joy.

"Higgins? Higgins! Where is that man? I distinctly told him the linens in the south wing were to be aired by dusk! And tell the footman that the silver polish is leaving a smudge on the gravy boat. It’s unacceptable!"

Aunt Cornelia. The She-Devil was on a domestic warpath.

"Move!"

I squeaked, grabbing Casimir’s expensive lapels and yanking him toward a narrow, shadowed alcove behind a particularly hideous marble bust of some long-dead, scowling ancestor.

We scrambled into the space, colliding with a muffled thud and a very un-aristocratic grunt. Casimir slammed me against the dusted wall, his large frame acting as a human shield, boxing me into the shadows.

The alcove was about four inches too small for a man of his build and a woman in a reinforced corset. I was flattened against the cold stone, my nose pressed into the crisp linen of his shirt, while his hands were braced on either side of my head.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

"Madam?" Higgins’s voice was calm and professional, the picture of a man who had dealt with her tantrums for decades.

"Look at the drapes!" Cornelia’s voice was getting closer.

"They look limp, Higgins. Why are they limp? Where on earth are the maids? If I wanted limp fabric, I’d move to New Jersey. Check the tie-backs. And for heaven’s sake, see to the library. I’m certain I saw a cobweb on the Encyclopedia Britannica. It’s as if this house has simply decided to decompose while I’m still breathing!" 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

"Of course, madam. I’ll see to it immediately."

We both went rigid. I looked up at Casimir. In the dim light, his eyes were wide. A stray puff of dust from the wall settled right on the bridge of his nose.

His nostril twitched.

Oh, god. No.

I saw the sneeze face forming. His eyes squeezed shut, his face scrunched up, and his chest took a sharp, hitching breath.

I didn’t think. I lunged upward, pressing my palm firmly over his mouth and pinching his nose shut with my other hand.

His eyes popped open, looking at me with absolute betrayal. His muffled breath was hot against my palm, a frantic ’mmph!’ vibrating through his jaw.

"Don’t you dare," I mouthed, my eyes promising him a one-way ticket to a 19th-century asylum if he let a single sound out.

"Did you hear that?" Aunt Cornelia’s voice stopped.

She was right outside the alcove. I could practically smell her lavender water and disappointment.

"A dull thud. Like a heavy sack of flour being dropped."

"Perhaps it was the wind, madam?" Higgins’s voice prompted.

"The wind does not sound like a sack of flour, Higgins. This house is infested with incompetence. I shall have to speak to my nephew. Casimir! Casimir, are you in the study?"

She waited. Casimir stayed frozen under my hands, his entire body shaking with the Herculean effort of suppressed laughter and a trapped sneeze. He looked like he was about to explode.

"Typical," Aunt Cornelia huffed. "Brooding over his ledgers again. He’s been utterly unreachable since Eleanor arrived. That girl has brought something with her—a taint in the air, a rot in the very bones of this house. It’s infected everyone. Rotted their brains."

She let out a sharp, jagged sniff—the kind of sound a bloodhound makes when it’s picked up a trail it doesn’t like—before deigning to move on from the topic of my character assassination.

"Come, Higgins. We’re checking the pantry. I suspect Cook is being generous with the butter again. As if we’re running a charity for cows."

The clack-clack-clack finally faded toward the servant’s stairs.

I waited ten full seconds before I slowly lowered my hands.

Casimir immediately let out a long, wheezing breath, his forehead dropping onto my shoulder as he shook with silent, jagged laughter.

"You," he gasped, his voice a wrecked whisper, "nearly suffocated the man who pays your bills."

"You," I whispered-yelled, swatting his arm, "were going to sneeze on the top of my head! We would have been sent to the social gallows because you can’t handle a little dust!"

"It was a substantial amount of dust, Clara. I believe I just inhaled a Guggenheim ancestor." He pulled back, his eyes roving over my face, a stray cobweb hanging off his ear. "And you pinched my nose. Quite violently."

"It was for the greater good. Do you want to explain to her why we’re playing sardines in a hole behind Great-Uncle Thaddeus?"

Casimir looked at the scowling marble bust, then back at me, a slow, crooked smile breaking across his face—the kind of smile that made my heart do a backflip.

"I believe," he rasped, reaching out to brush a smudge of soot off my cheek, "that I am going to have this bust moved to the attic tomorrow. It’s a safety hazard."

"You’re a safety hazard," I countered, finally letting out the laugh I’d been holding. "The Great Casimir Guggenheim, terrified of his own aunt."

"I am not terrified," he said, leaning in until our lips were inches apart, the humor in the air turning into something much heavier, much warmer. "I am merely... exercising tactical caution."

"Right. Tactical caution. Is that what they call hiding in the dark now?"

He smiled, slow and crooked, and kissed the corner of my mouth.

"In this great house?" His lips brushed my cheek, my jaw, the spot below my ear. "Oh, little bird. It’s going to be more than that."