A Christmas Conspiracy Read online

  “I have,” she shuddered, “more than one reason to suspect them, but it is a long story. Do but look above us for a moment.”

  Giles held the candles up. “What in heaven’s name is a kissing bough doing in the attic?”

  “Like me, it seems to be forming icicles.”

  “What are those minxes up to now, I wonder?”

  “I think I have an idea,” she said slowly. “Come, Giles, let us go back up the stairs. Unless I was hallucinating from the cold, I believe I saw some blankets piled about.”

  “Do not be a looby, Fanny,” he said with unexpected good humor as he took her hand once more. “I should think it will be at least another ten minutes before we begin to hallucinate.”

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time Giles had tucked Fanny under the pile of blankets on the featherbed, she was shivering quite violently. He knelt by her side as he examined the basket of provisions with which his thoughtful daughters had furnished them.

  “Well,” he said at last, “at least they have good taste. This would appear to be some of the brandy my father laid down. Appropriate. I was, after all, saving it for a special occasion.”

  He uncorked it and looked into the basket once again.

  “Unfortunately,” he sighed, “they did not think of glasses.”

  “Glasses be hanged!” Fanny shuddered. “Just give me some!”

  He chuckled in the semi-darkness. “Ever demure, my dear.”

  “You see—I have not lost my charm.” She tilted the bottle back, took an unladylike gulp and gasped. “Thank you very kindly, sir,” she croaked at last.

  “Indeed.”

  He took a drink himself and continued to inspect the basket’s contents. “Tarts, a box of comfits, champagne—exceedingly well chilled—a book.”

  “What is it?”

  Her husband groaned. “Byron! Now where could they have found that?”

  Fanny giggled and took the bottle once more. This time she sipped it more cautiously. “I always wondered what you gentlemen found so delightful in brandy. Now I know.”

  “You must enlighten me.”

  “Why it is the loss of sensation in the end of one’s nose, of course.”

  “Are you certain your nose has not frozen?”

  “What an interesting idea! It was quite painful before. Now it is not.”

  Giles leaned over to her, reached out and touched her nose.

  “Well?”

  “I’m sorry,” he told her, a tremor of laughter in his voice, “but my hands are too frozen to determine—”

  “Giles!” she cried. “You must come under these blankets at once! I cannot say for certain what our daughters hope to accomplish by this trick, but I cannot believe they mean us to perish.”

  “What? And be left to Miss Walleye’s care? I think not!” He chafed his hands vigorously and tucked them under his arms. “You are certain you would not mind?”

  “Do not be a paperskull, Giles! Now be quick,” she said as she moved over on the featherbed and lifted the blankets for him. After only a moment’s hesitation, he came in beside her and pulled the covers around them.

  “Now,” she continued as she snuggled next to him, “you must tell me about this mysterious Miss Walleye—I am all agog!”

  As Giles related to her the events surrounding his decision to make Miss Walleye a part of his household, it became clear to Fanny how the circumstances prompting her own journey must have come about. From his description, she could well imagine her daughters’ distress at the prospect of such a companion. Indeed, her own sensibilities were mightily offended.

  “And so,” her husband concluded, “I informed them the good lady would arrive in time for Christmas and would immediately begin to prepare them for their come-outs. I imagine the storm must have delayed—”

  Fanny’s laughter interrupted this account. “Oh, Giles!” she exclaimed. “Forgive me, but it is so funny. How can you even begin to think our daughters are ready to be presented?”

  “They will be sixteen,” he said stiffly. “Is that not the proper age?”

  “Proper age perhaps, although it is a bit young. Even so, you must see they have no bronze—in spite of their being so brazen. Why, they are even less fit for society than I was at their age. Why, they are no more ready for London than a pair of naughty kittens. Just a moment.” Fanny pulled the twins’ letter from her sleeve and handed it to her husband. “Only look at this, the incitement for my having arrived here so precipitously.”

  He took the page from her, unfolded it and held it to the light. As he read the odd missive, she watched his expression in the candlelight, vexation warring with mirth. Her old Giles. How lovely to see him again.

  “Well,” he said at last, “our ‘fair and noble daughters’ have got some part of it right. I do,” he admitted softly, “still wear your miniature.”

  “Next to your heart?”

  “Their knowledge of anatomy is somewhat faulty. I keep it in my waistcoat pocket, actually.”

  “Ah—a slightly lower region? I hope it does not give you indigestion, my dear.”

  “No. Merely the occasional bout of heartburn.”

  That stung. Fanny felt the tears pricking at her eyes, in spite of Giles’ arm around her. She swallowed and resumed her narrative. She told him of the list she had found under the girls’ pillow, their assessment of her appearance, about the orchid and the poem. These revelations he met with surprising good humor. “All that remains from their list,” she concluded with forced brightness, “is to see what role this mysterious Belinda plays. Have you an idea?”

  “Not the least clue. What remarkable daughters we have,” he said as he drew her closer. “I know I must seem stern to them, but I do love them very much—else I should have had them in the stocks before this. How unfortunate, though, they should be possessed of each of our own worst faults.”

  “Faults!” she protested gamely. “Whatever do you mean, Giles?”

  “Why, of course your high spirits and my stubbornness. An exceedingly potent combination, I must say.”

  She nestled more closely into his accommodating shoulder. Perhaps his remark about heartburn had been metaphoric. His heart might still be sore, but, then, so was hers.

  “Are you unhappy I have come?” she whispered.

  “Oh, Fanny!” he murmured. “How sad that such a question can be possible. I know I have not welcomed you, but, believe me, my heart has cried out for you where my voice has not.”

  Fanny’s courage swelled. She reached up and drew his face down to her own. “You must know I have never stopped loving you,” she whispered.

  Only a brief moment’s hesitation passed before his mouth closed over hers, mingling their inner warmth with the sharp taste of brandy, and he drew her against him in an embrace of such intensity she gasped for breath.

  “Nothing matters,” he whispered against her ear. “Nothing but this moment and all the future ones. The past is forgot, Fanny. I shall never torment you by demanding explanations.”

  She pulled herself abruptly from him. “The past is important to me, Giles. I wish to explain—”

  “Hush, my love. You need not—”

  “Listen to me!” Her voice trembled with pent-up tears. “I shall be heard! You cannot say that something which has haunted me these last years is not important!”

  He sighed heavily in the darkness. “I merely wish to spare us both pain, Fanny.”

  “And I wish to regain whatever trust you once had in me.”

  She waited a moment for him to object further, but he remained silent.

  “I am not unaware, you must realize,” she began again after a moment, “that I sorely tested your patience. But you must know it was done on purpose, Giles.”

  “On purpose?” he asked quietly.

  “You cannot know how unhappy I was when you all but forced me to go to London that year after the twins were born. I know I had some difficulties becoming accustomed to this country
life, but I did so love you. I felt as if I were being banished, that my high spirits jangled too much here in this serene sanctuary of yours. But I was too proud to beg that I might stay.”

  He began to protest.

  “No! Let me continue. London, when I returned there, still held some charm, but, as year followed year, I found the city and the ton more and more hollow. I yearned for you to surprise me with a visit, to be with me for more than the week when you escorted me to and from town—or ask me to remain on the estate with you. I would have done so happily.”

  He sighed in the darkness. “I thought I bored you, that the trappings of motherhood palled. You seemed so distant. I feared that, unless I did what I could to make you happy, I would lose you entirely.”

  Fanny shook her head. “But, Giles, I tried to show you I could be happy in the country. I gave house parties, sponsored fetes.”

  “I took them as evidence you missed London.”

  “Oh, Giles, how foolish we were—to talk through gestures rather than words. To read them as if they were texts one could interpret.” She leaned into his shoulder once more and drew the covers more closely about them.

  “I grew more desperate each year as the Season approached,” she went on. “Then I had a truly foolish notion. I fixed on the idea of forcing you somehow to jealousy. It was witless of me, I know, but to some extent it worked. I made sure reports of my flirting, innocent as, I assure you, it was, would reach you. You came and got me, railed at me. It was fierce attention, but attention, nonetheless.”

  “And Quentin Willoughby?” he asked after a moment.

  “Yes,” she murmured darkly. “Quentin Willoughby. Do you remember? We thought him our friend. I had never included him in my simulated snares, but that year he sought me out. At first, it merely seemed his high spirits and mine converged. Our circle danced until dawn, laughed until we ached. It was an antidote to my loneliness. That Christmas, I travelled with Madcap to his country house for the holidays. You had been invited, but . . .”

  “I shall tell you in a moment,” he said quietly.

  “It was after dinner one night and—oh, it was so stupid of me! We were all practicing for the charades we were to perform. Quentin told me Madcap had wagered he and I could not play a scene from Romeo and Juliet together without giggling. It was the very sort of thing she would do. I laughed and said at once I could play the scene with any hobby horse— it made no difference. So we set about it. Madcap was to have been there, but ...”

  “But I walked in instead.”

  “Yes.” She turned her face away.

  “There is something you do not know, Fanny. You are quite correct—we thought Quentin was our friend. He had made certain, though, that word reached me ... he had sounded it about he meant to compromise my wife. He had even wagered with several other gentlemen what my reaction would be. I rode like the devil to get there.”

  Fanny stared ahead as the candles flickered one by one into darkness. To think the web had lain between them all these years. Snip one strand and the rest fell away.

  “You see,” she said at last, “The past does matter—as much as the future.”

  * * * *

  Although the twins had every reason to have spent a sleepless night, the sun had risen high by the time Sally entered their chamber and pulled the curtains back.

  “Sally!” Tavie cried, suddenly alert. “Whatever time is it?”

  “Almost half past ten, and a beautiful day. They say the road is open all the way to North Umphish.”

  “Half past ten!” Genie leaped from the bed, pulling Tavie with her, snatched a large key from the table, and raced for the door. They flung themselves into the corridor, careened around corners, their night rails flying, and dashed for the door to the attic. When they reached it, they stopped in their tracks. The door stood open.

  Aghast, Tavie seized Genie’s arm. “If the road to North Umphish is open, we can pack our band boxes and be away—”

  “And do what?” her sister asked helplessly. “Hire ourselves as governesses perhaps?”

  “We certainly made a thorough enough study of the creatures. I daresay if we dressed like frumps—”

  “Oh, Tavie! It simply will not fadge. There is nothing for it but to be locked in our chamber for a week, eat black bread and water, and contrive a way to make ourselves so excessively charming our parents cannot but forgive us.”

  “We shall have wasted away to nothing by then,” Tavie said in tones of sore disconsolation, “to say nothing of missing Christmas. What’s more, now the road is open, that dreadful Miss Walleye will be here after all—and it is altogether likely even Mama will not champion us against her now.”

  “We must not give up hope yet,” Genie said stoutly. “Let us see if Mama is in her chamber. Perhaps we can explain.”

  The twins retraced their steps down the corridor with considerably less rapidity than they had traversed it a moment or two earlier. They were surprised when they reached the door to their mama’s chamber to find that the noxious Flops was asleep outside, emitting wheezing snuffles of distressing volume. At their approach, he opened one baleful eye, summoned a listless snarl, and went back to sleep.

  “Do you suppose,” Genie whispered, her sense of the ridiculous returning, “there is a way we can persuade them the dog is responsible?”

  “Only if our parents are vastly more stupid than is likely. What an inconvenience it is,” Tavie frowned, “not to have a younger sibling on whom to blame such things.”

  “What are you two about now?”

  The pair turned to see Sally bearing swiftly down upon them.

  “Oh, Sally!” Tavie cried. “It is all gone awry. Mama and Father have escaped!”

  “Yes,” Sally returned tartly. “They are escaped to your mother’s chamber where they have been these past two hours or more. I took the liberty of unlocking the attic door at dawn. If I had had an idea you would interpret my advice by exiling them to that frozen region, I should have minded my own business.”

  “What odd noises,” Genie said, ignoring Sally’s scolding and pressing an ear to the door. “Listen, Tavie. It does not sound in the least like they are merely embracing. You do not suppose they would do one another harm? Why, it sounds as if—”

  Sally took both girls firmly by the shoulders and turned them down the corridor. “I believe your parents do quite well,” she told them. “Let us go to your chamber and ready you for the day.”

  The girls followed Sally, casting many a curious glance over their shoulders. As Sally helped them to dress, they besieged her with numerous speculative questions about what their parents must be up to behind the closed door. All of these the maid decided had best be left to their mother when that lady had leisure to address such concerns.

  “I think perhaps we had best give them their gifts this morning,” Tavie advised as she tied a ribbon about her curls.

  “Yes, of course, but ought we say they are from us, or continue with our original plan?”

  “It is a puzzle, for if they come from us, our parents may find their hearts softening—yet wonder how we contrived to find the funds!”

  “Do you not think,” Sally interrupted them, “you had best avoid further tangles?”

  While the maid’s monition presented quite a novel idea, the twins, who were beginning to find this particular intrigue tedious, now it had gone awry, merely shrugged.

  * * * *

  When Giles and Fanny, hand in hand, entered the breakfast parlor later that morning, they found their daughters sitting, quietly waiting for them. At each of their plates lay a package. Fanny’s was resplendent in gold tissue; their father’s, in somewhat less glory, was wrapped in a twist of stationery.

  “Good morning,” their mother greeted them with an ingenuous smile. “Did you sleep well?”

  The twins nodded, speechless. Do you not think they look somewhat flushed, Genie?

  Doubtless they have been huddled in front of the fire. Pray, Tavie, do
not remark on it!

  Pray, do not treat me as if I were the sheerest sapskull! I would no more—

  “Well,” their father said as he took his place and examined the parcel, “what have we here?”

  “Our Christmas Eve packages, it would seem,” his wife said. She picked up her lovely package and read the inscription, “Why, Giles!” she said, fluttering her eyelashes at him, “you shouldn’t have.”

  “I don’t believe I did,” he said in an amused undertone.

  She tore away the paper and opened the box before her. Stunned for several seconds beyond lucid speech, she at last managed, “How very original, Giles. I do not believe I have ever seen the like! Why there are so many colors—and such brilliant ones, at that—I shall be able to wear it with any costume.”

  As she clasped the enormous jewelled peacock about her neck, Giles choked violently on his coffee.

  “It quite takes your breath away, I can see,” she told him sweetly.

  “Indeed,” he said when he had recovered himself. “I cannot wait to see what I have here.”

  He undid the twist of paper before him. In a moment, he, too, was at a loss for words.

  “Do hold it up—for the girls to see,” Fanny requested.

  As he did so, Fanny could see he held before him a somewhat tarnished silver toothpick.

  “My dearest Giles! I wish you will always think of me when you use it,” his wife said lovingly.

  All seems to be well! Tavie thought in amazement. They have not even mentioned our misdeeds. It is almost as if they do not suspect us. I haven’t the least idea how that came about—

  Why, through our genius, of course, her sister returned smugly.

  But, what about. . . ?

  Never mind! All is well.

  “Your mother and I have a question for you,” their father broke in. “Who is Belinda?”

  The twins immediately assumed expressions of such innocence as set their parents’ already much abused nerves to twitching.

  “Belinda? Tavie, do you know of a Belinda?”

  “I cannot for the world think of one,” the other innocent returned.