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Page 344
did not wish to marry him. It would not have been so bad if he could have believed she did not understand her own heart. Then he could have hoped to win it. She had still been unsure before the fire, yet she had been fond enough to seek him amidst the holocaust. They had quarreled and, somehow, that had set her to examining her own feelings more closely. Plainly what she discovered had not been in his favor.
Her feelings did not matter, of courseexcept to him. Joanna would marry him because she was a dutiful girl with a clear vision of the catastrophe that would follow her refusal. She would be a good wife too, Geoffrey thought, grinding his teeth and barely restraining himself from tearing his hair or beating his head on the wall because his father would rush over and stop him and begin to ask questions again. Joanna was resigned to her fate. She had made her decision. Calmly and placidly she would couple with him, bear his children, help him to keep his lands and hers in perfect order, nurse him when he was sick or woundedand all the time, deep, deep in a buried corner of her heart she would wish she was free of him.
Lady Alinor was not blind to the trouble of the young people as Lady Ela was. There was, however, nothing Alinor could do for them. If she spoke to Joanna to try to comfort her, the girl might break down completely. She could not speak to Geoffrey because she did not know the basis of his obvious distress. To reassure him of the wrong thing might cause greater difficulties. All she could do was hope that Joanna's control would hold and that Salisbury could keep Geoffrey from killing someone important.
From her heart Lady Alinor cursed the necessity of this court marriage. Not only had it laid two young people, already under a severe strain, open to the vicious tongues of a fearful and disappointed crowd but it had removed all possibility of keeping Geoffrey and Joanna employed. In an ordinary way, both of them would have been kept so busy making ready to entertain their guests, that they would have had no time to quarrel with each other or even to think much

 
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