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"Do not be a fool," Simon growled. "If you had doubts of my willingness to please you, you had only to tell the King you did not wish to marry me. He would have withdrawn his consent hastily and willingly enough." |
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"What!" Alinor shrieked, her eyes glinted green and gold with rage, "after all the trouble I have taken to get you? Do you think I am mad?" |
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"Yes!" Simon bellowed. "Yes, I think you are mad! You are barely a woman, and I am an old man. You must be mad, and I must be madder than you to have allowed you to bewitch me into this mutual insanity." |
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Alinor had drawn a deep breath to enable her to shout her husband down. Instead she heaved it out in a disgusted sigh. "I should have known," she muttered resignedly. |
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"I tell you," he went on in a lower voice, "where you are concerned, I lose all senseall sense of fitness, all sense of right and wrong, all sense of common decency even. I tried to tell the King that he was right, that I was too old, but I could not." |
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"I would have slain you!" Alinor exclaimed. "After I had dragged myself over mountains, through tempests, had endured cold to freeze the soul and heat to roast the guts, lived in this misbegotten, disease-infested, pest-ridden land, put up with Berengaria's whining and vagariesall only to be near you." |
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"Dear heart," Alinor laughed, "I thought you knew that. I love you." |
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Simon groaned. "Look at me. My hair is white" |
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"Not where it counts," Alinor interrupted, laughing harder. "If I tickle the flames of Hell, will they burn me?" |
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There was, Alinor soon discovered, no lack of heat in the flames. She was well enough scorched so that she rose somewhat unsteadily from the bed after the fire had subsided to get a drink and bring one to Simon. When both bed curtains were pulled back, the |
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