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with the fact. He took the marriage contract, signed by the King as witness, and started for London the day after they arrived. |
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Alinor missed him, but there was a great deal to do. Sir Andre could not, of course, be in constant residence because of his heavy duties as deputy sheriff. Land disputes and petty criminal cases had piled up. Alinor set herself to clearing up these matters and to listening to tales of woe about bad crops and lost fishing boats to disentangle malingerers from honest unfortunates. Somehow in her absence spinning spindles, looms, and embroidery frames had produced far fewer products than they were wont to do. Her maids needed lessoning, and they got it. |
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From before dawn to past dusk, Alinor ran up and down stairs, rode, listened, gave justice, praised, punished, and scolded. She had never been so happy in all her life. It was so great a pleasure to be doing something real again that she scarcely felt the fatigue of long hours. No problem was too great, no burden too heavy. Any matter that puzzled or distressed her could be put aside for when Simon returned. What had kept her sleepless in the night before her marriage troubled her not a whit now that he shared the responsibility. For those broad shoulders and that wise, experienced head all such burdens were light. |
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Simon had been expected back before Christmas, but Alinor received a letter instead. Upon arriving in London, he had found the Queen had left unexpectedly the day before to make an unannounced progress. He was pursing her as rapidly as possible. |
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''But you know, my love," he wrote, "the quickness and unexpectedness of her motions. The word in London was that she intended for Oxford, but when I started upon that road there was no news of her passage. Back I came and hied me round the city gates only to find that she had departed upon the road to Canterbury. Thus I am two days behind her. God alone knows when I will find her and then, far more |
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