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murmured. "Go up now, Joanna. Go up quickly." |
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Obediently, Joanna went in and up the stairs. She realized it was very late, but she pinched her maids awake and ordered them to ready her for bed. There was something very important she had to think about, and she did not wish to be distracted from her thoughts by the need to unbutton buttons and untie laces and fold her clothes and brush her hair. While she was being attended, however, she did not "think" at all. She drifted into a sea of sensation again, remembering acutely how she had felt in Geoffrey's arms. That was not the point, she told herself firmly, as the tugging of the brush in her hair ended her dreaming, just as Geoffrey's pull on her hair had ended her previous quiescence. |
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The point Joanna needed to think about was not how she felt about Geoffrey but how Geoffrey felt about herand what to do about it. She had not been in the least troubled by Geoffrey's passion because she was prepared to render passion for passion and enjoy it. No priest would ever convince Joanna that the pleasures of the body were in themselves evil. The bull and the cow, the horse and mare, the dog and bitch all took pleasure in coupling. Those creatures could not sin because they had no souls. Thus, God had given that pleasure to all, and it was no sin in itself. Joanna was perfectly willing to acknowledge that the pleasure might lead one into sin or that it might be a higher good to mortify the body by denying it that pleasure and so obtain holiness of spirit, but that was not her role in life. Her role and her duty, for which she had been fitted since birth, was the care of her lands and her people, and part of that duty was the breeding up of sons and daughters to follow her. |
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That was all very well and good. That was Geoffrey's duty also, and it was right that they should both take pleasure in itbut there was that other thing, that one soft kiss that had nothing of the body in it. That kiss was a message from the soul, as was the soft and slightly broken voice that said, "Farewell, then, beloved." And, when he bid her not come down to say goodbye, he had said, "It will be hard |
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