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Page 79
back around the table and sat down in the chair again. It had occurred to him that there might be some innocent explanation for the peculiar entries.
''I have been looking over your books of accounts," he said quite mildly.
Because she was furious with him for frightening Brother Philip and also furious with herself for getting into this situation, Alinor made a mistake. "And you have found that I have falsified certain amounts. Indeed, my lord, I do not know why you were examining those accounts at all. They are nothing to do with you."
Simon felt his mouth drop open. He was having enough difficulty absorbing the fact that Alinor could read and write and keep accounts. He had been dumbfounded at her extravagance. But this bold assertion of forgery and a round rejection of his authorityall from a child who looked as white and pure as a churchyard lilybereft him of speech. The sickening thought that churchyard lilies grew out of decaying corpses came to him, and to strangle that image he forced out the first words that he found in his mind.
"There is no matter to do with your lands that is beyond my knowledge or my authority."
"What?" Alinor rejoined furiously. "You mean I am responsible to you for the trinkets my grandfather chose to buy me ten years since? Or for the straw babies I played with when I was three? Or perhaps you wish me to account for the milk from my wet nurse's breast?"
"Do not be ridiculous," Simon shouted, getting to his feet again so suddenly that his chair crashed backward. "What have straw babies and mother's milk to do with anything!"
"That is what I am asking you!" Alinor spat. "If I am responsible to you for what I spent last year, why am I not to be held responsible for the pennies paid my wet nurse?"
Just as he was about to repeat in an even more

 
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