Free A Christmas Conspiracy by Mary Chase Comstock

not anticipated, however, he would be cast into the blue devils by it.
    She realized with a sudden tremor, though, as she stood silently in the doorway, that her return to her former home had cast her down as well. And the reason? she asked herself rhetorically. Why, of course, because she still must love him so. Seeing him again had given lie to her former protestations that she got on quite nicely without him. When all was said and done, her life was naught but an empty shell. For all its apparent gaiety, it was no more than a stage role she assumed whenever an audience appeared. When the curtain came down at the end of the day, she lay in the dark, alone. The girls had been more right than they knew: without the mask of her London life, she was nothing but a dismal creature, without light or hope.
    “Fanny!” Giles exclaimed, looking up at her at last, and half rising from his seat. “I did not see you there. Pray, sit down.”
    “Good morning, Giles,” she smiled with what she hoped was tranquility. Feeling more than a little awkward in her unsuitable costume, she picked up her gown’s demi-train and entered the room. Rather than face his probing gaze immediately, she stopped a moment, at the buffet, poured herself some coffee and selected a few items from the various covered dishes. Then she sat down beside him.
    A few more moments passed in silence, punctuated only by the ticking of the mantel clock. Unconsciously mirroring her husband, Fanny pushed the bits of food about on her plate, lifted her cup, stared into its depths, and set it down again untasted.
    “Do you think the weather will clear?” she asked him at last.
    He looked up at her, startled. “You mean to go on then?”
    “I do not know,” she answered simply. “I ... I am unsure of my welcome.”
    Unsure, himself, of the answer, Giles rose and walked to the window where he stood gazing out at the grounds for some minutes. To the west he could see another bank of heavy clouds crouched on the horizon. No, the weather would not clear soon. She must stay, welcome or not. He glanced back at her, sitting quietly in her oddly chosen ensemble, the epitome of what drove him to near madness: beauty, eccentricity, and absolute defiance of conventionality. He could not tell whether he felt more like abandoning all wisdom and clasping her to his heart in spite of everything, or turning from her and raising another wall of defense about his heart.
    When at last he faced her, he merely said, “This is, after all, your home, Fanny.”
    She smiled ruefully. “That’s as may be, Giles, but that fact does not make my welcome here any more or less apparent. What is it to be, Giles? If I have been unwise in coming, pray instruct me to keep to my chamber until I can make my remove. Or else,” she said, the firmness of her voice belying the quaking of her heart, “let me be a part of this family again, if only for the holiday.”
    He paced a few moments more before turning to answer her. “I am past knowing what wisdom is, Fanny,” he confessed.
    “And I,” she replied, lifting her chin a fraction of an inch, “have never had a grain. Perhaps we must ask our daughters what is best to do.”
    He looked at her in mild surprise.
    “ That,” he replied dryly, “would be exceedingly efficient, for we should be assured that their suggestions must reflect nothing but sheerest folly.”
    “Why, Father!”
    Sir Giles and his wife were startled to find that their daughters stood in the doorway, looking the very picture of wounded, youthful pride.
    “It is quite true,” Tavie protested tremulously, “we have had our troubles in the past, but you must own, Father, we have been pattern cards of propriety these last two or three days!”
    “Ah, a record ne plus ultra!” Sir Giles congratulated them. “Forgive me for having slighted your efforts.”
    Fanny, well aware of her daughters’ most recent transgressions, held her smile in check as the twins sniffed