A Christmas Conspiracy by Mary Chase Comstock

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