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slur cast by Geoffrey's jealousy on her purity than by the slur cast on her good taste. "Braybrook," she muttered furiously. "As if I would even spit on that mouther of empty phrases, that braying ass. Just because Geoffrey will roll in a bed with any piece of offal that offers itself, does he think I do not know the worth of what I give? Does he think me so much a fool as to take false coineven in the name of love?" |
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Caution was innate in Joanna, however, and she did not spill her rage onto parchment, later to be regretted. First she asked Lady Mary whether any nobleman had come seeking her. Being assured that none had, she called Brian and went riding until time and physical fatigue cooled her temper. It then occurred to her that Geoffrey might be guiltless. It was not impossible that he had written before he heard any rumors, and his reserve might be owing to some cause at which she could not even guess. She had no intention either of answering his note or of waiting at Clyro longer than necessary to redistribute the extra provender she had assembled there. Geoffrey needed to learn that a polite request was more likely to win compliance to anything reasonable than a curt order. |
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Meanwhile, she addressed herself to writing to Lady Ela, stating flatly that she had left Whitechurch with no escort other than Beorn and Knud and the fighting troop. Moreover, she had not laid eyes on Sir Henry de Braybrook since her final morning at court when her last sight of him, struggling to disentangle himself from the rose bushes into which Brian had tipped him, was scarcely likely to engender romantic notions in her. Furthermore, she was shocked and hurt that Lady Ela could think her taste so vulgar and ill-formed as to take pleasure in Sir Henry's vapid mouthings. |
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"It is bad enough," she wrote, "that you should think so ill of my discretion and my powers of dispensing with unwanted attentions. It is far worse that you should believe I would permit that fewmet of a hare to come after me, join me secretly, and remain with me. Quite aside from ap- |
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