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Page 491
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Even in her short life, Joanna had suffered many sorrows and anxieties. She had watched beside her father and her infant sister as they died. She had suffered agonies in the last few weeks over Geoffrey. Nonetheless, the ten minutes between the time Lady Gilliane ran from the gates of Baisieux keep and the time a frail and haggard Geoffrey, supported by two servants, appeared in Lady Gilliane's place were the longest in her whole life.
"Geoffrey!" she shrieked.
Her impulse was to fling herself from the saddle and run to him. With an effort that was near physical pain, she suppressed it. Instead, she turned her mare and whipped it back out of arrow range.
"Here," she cried, "come to me here, where they cannot kill you."
"You fool!" Geoffrey roared, producing a remarkable volume of sound for one who, a moment ago, appeared half-fainting. Invigorated by a burst of rage, he cast off the supporting arms of the servants and limped forward. "What do you here in an enemy land? With only five men to guard you? Put down that knife! Get off that horse! What do you mean by offering such an insult to people who have shown me so much kindness!"
Ordinarily, Joanna did not have the quick temper of Lady Alinor, but in the last weeks she had endured too much. All at once it seemed as if all her torments were her husband's faultthe weeks of fear, the stunned frozen horror, the nights and days of weeping. Her immediate reaction was a rage that rendered her speechless and drove from her mind completely the fact that the object of all her misery was before her eyes. She did, indeed, throw down the knife. She

 
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