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Page 25
"Marriage! Joanna? In marriage?"
That made Salisbury laugh again. "Why are you surprised? I have had a score of offers for you. I had begun to doubt my wisdom in turning them away because Ian never seemed to want to come to the point about Joanna. But I have been hoping for this since he married Alinor. I wanted to contract you then"
"I had no thought of marriage," Geoffrey remarked stiffly.
"No thought of marriage? Do not be a fool! If you do not marry, who is to inherit your lands?"
"I intended to leave them to William," Geoffrey said simply, "or perhaps to Isabella or Henry, if you thought that would be better."
Salisbury got up and gripped his son's shoulders. "Do not let me hear you speak like that again, Geoffrey. You should have been my eldest son by law as well as by birth. And you would have been, had not my father been eaten by greed and pride and ambition. Your mother was a good woman, and I loved her. What you have is your due. You are taking nothing from your brothers or your sister. God knows there is enough and more than enough for them."
"Perhaps, but for me there is too much. Ela says nothing, but she cannot like"
"If there is something Ela does not like, she is the last one to say nothing," Salisbury laughed. Then he sobered and shook his head. "You are wrong, Geoffrey. Ela loves you very dearly. She grudges you nothing. Do you think I made the disposition of my property without consulting her?"
"She grudges you nothing," Geoffrey said. "No, I do not mean she is not fond of me. I know she is, but she desires above all that you should be happy."
There were other reasons too, Geoffrey guessed, for his stepmother to make no protest over the property assigned to him. She had not always been fond of him and had not been willing to take him into her home when he was a child. Now she was sorry and felt guilty about that refusal. Geoffrey

 
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