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Page 198
shadow cast by a small grove of fruit trees. Alinor was frightened, thinking someone was watching, and she glanced over her shoulder. There was nothing, only the gently moving leaves all silvered by the moonlight. The silence stretched.
"No," Simon said at last, and his voice shook a little. "I will do nothing. I will not think of it. If it is God's will, I will accept His great gift gladly, but I am not sure. Likely I should go to the Queen and tell her I have failed in my trust"
"Simon," Alinor exclaimed, "I"
"Do not threaten me," he warned. There was that in his voice with which Alinor dared not contend. "I will not do that either," he continued, "because there is something in what has happened between us that I do not understand. I will leave it in God's hands. Little ill can come of my neglect to speak. I will be gone tomorrow, or the next day at the latest."
At that reminder, Alinor's breath caught. "Simon, you will not seek out danger? You would not"
He laughed at that quite naturally. "What? Lose the campaign to die romanticallyand fail the King's trust as well as the Queen's? Child, you read too many lays. I go to fight the Welsh, and a dead man is a poor leader."
The horrible notion that he might deliberately seek to die was set aside. Simon might be the type to seek the peace of death if his emotions were too disordered, but not if that peace would stain his honor or interfere with his duty. Still, a troubled mind is not the best armor to carry into battle. Simon's own household guard was small, but Alinor could provide three hundred men who, upon her order, would fight around him. Alinor returned to the idea that had brought her into the garden in the first place.
"Why did you laugh when I suggested the men-at-arms from Roselynde should go with you? Is it so silly a notion? They are good fighting men. Sir Andre will vouch for that."

 
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