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Page 349
overawed by royalty," John said to Joanna.
The eyes that Joanna had until now kept lowered were suddenly raised to the king's. They glittered with a pale, hard light. The full lips were thinned, the fine nostrils flared. No wild vixen could have looked fiercer in the defense of her cubs. Inadvertently, the king drew a sharp breath. He had just seen again the face of Simon Lemagne as he had seen it so often before battle. But Joanna had already realized that she had prepared to defend Adam without cause. There had been no sly threat in John's comment, nor was there anything but good humor and then, for a moment, surprise on his face. Her expression softened. Little as she had been aware of anything beyond her own troubles, still she had heard many, even Ian, praising the king's change of heart and manner. Good terms coupled with wariness were always better than open enmity.
"Oh, my lord," she said softly, "I think he is possessed of devils. If there is mischief afoot, you may be sure that he is either in it orand more specially if he be apart from it and with a most innocent expressionthat he began it."
She then told an anecdote or two about Adam as a little boy. She blessed her brother's intervention from the bottom of her heart, finding herself able to talk lightly and easily to the king. She heard Adam make a remark to Geoffrey that she could not quite catch and heard Geoffrey agree but say that he had better bear himself more seemly. The king had taken as a jest what was meant as a jest. Nonetheless, to continue acting the fool would be disrespectful to John, who had been kind, and force the king either to be severe, which he did not wish to be, or to look a fool himself. There was so much good sense in what Geoffrey said and so much kindness in the way he said it that Joanna began to wonder whether she was building into Geoffrey monstrous intentions that were foreign to his nature.
It was fortunate that Joanna had brought a little inner calm to herself, for she was to share her conversation with John and Geoffrey for nearly six hours. Isabella's servants had done her proud. The feast was of four courses, with ten

 
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