//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."
