Mr. Theodore guffawed. “She didn’t!”
Heat singed the top of Clara’s ears. “Oh yes, she did.”
In a blink, the ball of fuzz leapt over Clara’s shoulder, landed on a nearby chair, and met her gaze with deceptively innocent eyes of blue. She sighed. “Hello, Phileas.”
Phileas took off with a yip.
Seconds later, Mum whizzed by in a flurry of skirts hoisted well above the ankle. “No time to explain, ducky. Rescue mission in progress. Help Todd.”
Stars, had Mum brought all three of the kits? Clara whirled around, wincing as the other woman’s screams of travail continued to echo through the cathedral. “Where is he?”
Cutting a deft right, Mum pursued Phileas as he jumped across the immaculate rows of chairs. “Caught in the screech owl’s crinoline. Make haste before she squishes the poor dear!”
“What about Hon—”
A piercing screech sent Clara’s hands flying to shield her ears. A fox kit lodged in crinoline, another on the run, and a third missing. In a cathedral. How was she supposed to take care of this unmitigated disaster?
Mr. Theodore placed a hand on her shoulder, strong and steady. “I’ll find Honorine while you help Todd.” He commenced searching under chairs.
Clara exhaled and ran toward the pandemonium. All theother tourists had since fled, leaving the screech owl to carry on without an audience. Not that anyone had told her. With theatrical hysteria, the woman wept and flapped and whirled, begging God to spare her life from demonic rodents. All the while her rotund husband played the role of useless stump. A sight that increased Clara’s gratitude for the man now coaxing a fox kit down from a gilded organ.
Clara summoned her calmest of tones. “Ma’am, if I am to render aid, you must stand still.”
The woman threw herself into a chair and screeched all the louder.
Very well. They would do this the hard way. Clara leveled a glower on the stump. “Secure your wife’s shoulders and hold her still. Unless you’d rather go deaf.”
The man did as he was told. Something, she’d a feeling, he did often.
Relieving the screech owl of her handkerchief, Clara shoved it in the woman’s open beak. Blessed silence returned to the cathedral. Much better. “Breathe through your nose, ma’am. There you are. Just so. Now stay still and calm, and we might yet remedy this situation with a modicum of propriety. For what I must do, I beg your pardon.” Lowering to the floor, she disappeared beneath the woman’s colossal hoop skirt.
A wide-eyed Todd met her gaze. Wedged between two rings of spring steel wire, the plump kit strove in vain to wriggle out of the contraption on his own.
Clara set to the work of liberation. “Peace, little one. This will be over soon.”
“Miss Stanton, be quick! The police have been summoned!”
CHAPTER
28
If someone had told Clara she’d one day find herself fleeing Strasbourg Cathedral with a juvenile fox while being pursued by policemen wielding batons and an irate priest armed with brimstone, she would’ve chuckled. Nervously.
For in her world, such bizarre occurrences weren’t wholly improbable.
With Todd in hand, Clara ran toward Mum and the main doorway on the west side, trying to elude the policemen now entering from the south. The clacking of their boots echoed through the vaulted cathedral, combating the policemen’s shouts. A bead of sweat trailed her brow. Would the police pursue them beyond the cathedral doors? And where on earth was Mr. Theodore?
Up ahead, Mum burst through the double doors and was transformed by brilliant light into a blackened silhouette. The petite shadow veered right and disappeared. Clara slipped through the closing doors, sights set on a fuchsia flutter in the distance.
Boots battered the ground behind her, punishing the pavers for aiding her escape. “Arrêter, mademoiselle!”
Apparently, the authoritiesdidintend to give chase beyond the cathedral. A cold lump lodged in Clara’s throat. What might be the punishment for sneaking fox kits into a place of worship? A fine? Time in prison? Hung, drawn, and quartered by an incensed priest?
The fuchsia speck took a left on the next street, and she hastened to follow suit. Cheeks burning from exertion, stomach roiling at the thought of being apprehended, she took the turn.
A hand plucked Clara from the street, and she fell backward against someone crouched behind an apple cart. A rock-solid male someone.Mr. Forrester?Little Todd whimpered in her left hand, and every fiber of her maternal instinct bristled. She dug claws into the strong arm wrapped about her waist and prepared to ram the back of her head into the stranger’s nose.
“It’s me, Miss Stanton.”
