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Page 98
fer to live in her own house. She was not at all sure she would be able to accommodate herself to being one unimportant individual in a large group of highborn maidens. Also, it would be very difficult to be alone with Simon in the crowded Court or to conceal her desire for him.
Caught short by where her mind had wandered from furniture, Alinor thoughtDo I desire him? Her hand remained poised above the parchment upon which she had been inscribing "2 pr chair wi cushion." "I will never finish this," she said aloud, exasperated with her unruly mind, and then burst into laughter as she looked down at what she had written. Instead of the word "red" which should have followed "cushion," bold and black, as if she had scored down harder than usual with her pen, stood ''SIMON."
The laughter was a release. What had loomed imminently threatening, a brilliantly blazing emotion like a barrel of flaming pitch falling, receded to a warm, pleasant glow like the rising sun on the horizon. There was no need to do anything. First it was necessary to test the temper and atmosphere of the Court. Then, if this feeling that had wakened in her was real and grew, she would find a way to achieve her desire. She always had in the past. Why should she fail now?
Simon never thought in those terms at all. When he rode blindly from Kingsclere, trailed by his squire and a handful of men-at-arms, he had only been seeking solitude as a wounded animal does. Unfortunately solitude could not produce for him a solution as it did for an arrow-struck beast. He could not be alone long enough so that his hurt could heal, and the dart that had struck him was not the kind that killed. Like a few old wounds Simon bore, it would stay in him, aching anew each time the area was touched.
They rode; they flushed game, which Simon never

 
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