A Christmas Conspiracy by Mary Chase Comstock Read Free Book Online Page A

as he had, holding the disgruntled pug before him as if it were a bundle of squirming refuse.
    It was all quite amusing, really. At least, it promised to be so by morning, she amended. The notion of the offensive Flops ranging about in her husband’s bed had enormously taken her fancy, as, apparently, it had her daughters’. Indeed, that must explain her untoward behavior just now—Giles had no business taking the dear girls to task over such a trifle, still less, blaming them with no more evidence than their past history. Little wonder she had reacted uncharitably.
    However, she sighed, it was ever Giles’s custom to jump to conclusions. If only he had never sent her off to London those years ago . If only she had not . . .
    Enough! she told herself sternly. She had long since determined she must live her life beyond its lost possibilities, if she were to live it at all. But still, the very walls which surrounded her were replete with the past. How could she avoid such thoughts?
    “Fanny?”
    Giles had entered quietly from the dressing room which connected their chambers. She looked up at him, holding back with difficulty the smile which threatened to betray a sudden, unlooked-for surge of tenderness as he stood before her in his nightclothes.
    “Good evening, Giles,” she said evenly.
    He shoved his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown and stood silently as he surveyed her. In the hush that lay between them, Flops sighed noisily and rolled over on his back.
    “How came you by that singularly unappealing mongrel?” he asked after an awkward moment.
    Fanny raised her eyebrows. “Mongrel, Giles? I assure you, Flops’s pedigree puts mine to shame, or so Hillary assures me.”
    “What?” he exclaimed. “Is that useless Hillary still hanging about? I should have thought some civic-minded person would have dispatched him by now.”
    “Alas! The age of chivalry is past—or so I gather. It seems we must learn to live with dragons in all their various and annoying guises. However,” she went on in apparent calm, “I cannot think you sought me out merely to disparage my dog.”
    Giles paced a moment in front of the fire before he turned and approached the bed. “I cannot say I know quite why I came in, Fanny—except, perhaps, to assure myself I had not imagined your being here.”
    She reached her hand out to him. “You may see for yourself whether or not I am corporeal.”
    He shook his head and turned away. “Fanny, Fanny,” sighed wretchedly. “What brings you out of the night like some cruel dream?”
    Fanny lowered her hand slowly, swallowing back the ache in her throat. A cruel dream? Was that what she represented to him?
    “Perhaps I shall tell you one day,” she said, forcing a teasing sound into her voice. “For the present, let us say I have returned out of curiosity—merely to see how things go on without me.”
    “And that is all?”
    “Why no,” she laughed with forced gaiety. “Hillary and Madcap threatened to invade my home for the holidays. You must surely see that such a circumstance would have been entirely ineligible.”
    “Well, if that is all,” he said stiffly, “then I shall ask you not to cut up our peace here. We have got on quite well without you, if you must know.”
    “I am so glad to hear it!” she returned brightly. “In that case I shall rest easy. Now, if you do not mind, I have already been sufficiently chilled this evening and I am weary far past civility. Good night.”
    Giles looked for a moment as if he might say something more, but he turned instead and silently left the room. In the deadening quiet which ensued, Fanny buried her face beneath the pillow and cried as if her heart would break.
    * * * *
    Giles threw himself into a chair by the fire and kneaded his temples. How could he have acted so stupidly? There Fanny had sat, looking so ridiculously beautiful in that ludicrous cap and, first thing, he must ask about that wretched dog—as if it were in