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Page 508
"Oh dear," Joanna exclaimed, blushing up to her hair and right down to her breasts.
That set Geoffrey off again. "We are man and wife," he chortled. "You are not caught in sin."
"No," Joanna hissed, half-amused and half-annoyed, scrambling into her clothing as quickly as she could, "but what must be thought of me to permit or, worse, to press a man in your condition to such an act?"
"Do not you dare ever say such a thing," Geoffrey expostulated, laughing harder. "What must be thought of me to need such urging?"
In the hall, Gilliane waited in a fever of impatience and anxiety. Edwina had known what her lady was doing; she had heard the opening moves and had just settled down to listen with enjoyment when Lady Gilliane had entered the antechamber. Most firmly, Edwina closed the door and resisted interruption. Even if the castle had been attacked at that moment, for no reason except threat of immediate death would Edwina have called her mistress. She, after all, bore the brunt of Joanna's bad temper. She was not going to allow anything to interfere with the relief of Joanna's frustration. Lady Joanna was attending her husband, Edwina said stubbornly; she would come in a few minutes, when she was finished.
Gilliane was too distressed to judge correctly Joanna's heavy eyes and flushed face when she came from the inner chamber. "Is Lord Geoffrey worse?" she asked anxiously.
Joanna was surprised. From the day after their arrival, Gilliane had shown only a polite interest in Geoffrey. Now her question had an intensity that was far beyond politeness. "No," Joanna replied, and then thinking of what they had been doing, "I hope not, but he is asleep now, I think."
Gilliane hesitated. It was against her training to wake a man except for an immediate emergency, but what she had to say seemed to need a man's decisiveness. On the other hand, it would be far easier to say what she must to Joanna. God knew what a man would do when he heard it.
"I will faithfully recount to him anything you wish him to hear," Joanna promised, more concerned with letting Geof-

 
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