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Page 14
wish to bear, to whose interests you believe you can devote yourself."
Stubbornly, Joanna shook her head. "I cannot choose. I have said, and I say again, that I am willing to marry any man you name to me." Suddenly her expression lightened. "Your reinforcements are here."
Alinor turned her head toward the doorway. She did not speak but her eyes lit and her color rose a little. Her husband hesitated in the doorway, his intense brown eyes looking from mother to daughter. It would not have been surprising if Joanna had refused to marry because no man she had seen could measure up to her stepfather. Alinor said often that Ian had the face of a black angel, and God had seen fit to preserve his dark masculine beauty. His battle scars were all on his body. Perhaps Ian's looks had made Joanna's friends pale in comparison, but it was useless to worry about that. Simply there was no one available to match Ian for looks, and there might never be.
"Well," he said when neither woman spoke, "what have you decided?"
Alinor shrugged. Joanna said, "I will be obedient to your will, my lord. I will marry any man you and my mother decide is fitting."
Instead of looking satisfied, Ian looked appalled. "My love," he said gently, "we will not force you. I will sooner stay and"
"No, no." Joanna protested, getting up and going over to him. "I am not unwilling, really I am not. I know it is time, and past time, for me to be married."
Ian put his arm around Joanna and drew her close. Over her head he looked doubtfully at his wife.
"She does not fancy any man she knows," Alinor remarked neutrally, as if a husband was a dish laid on the table.
"We have been too sudden," Ian said. "There is time enough. Do you think again, love"
Alinor cast an exasperated and affectionate glance at her husband. One would think he had not a bone in his body and

 
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