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Alinor turned to the west coast to meet her husband and take ship for Ireland. |
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After Geoffrey had news of their safe arrival from the returned ship, he had been at loose ends. He was not due to meet the king until the last week of May and, really, he had nothing to do until then. He could, of course, go to Hemel, but he knew his presence there would make his young castellan nervous during his preparation for war, making him feel his master did not trust him. If he went to Salisbury, his father might think it strange that he did not seek Joanna's company. Besides, there was a good deal of business to transact with her. That could be done by letter, but it would be an act of kindness to bring her the news in person of her family's safe arrival at their destination. |
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This excellent reasoning stood Geoffrey in good stead until he was within an hour's ride of Roselynde. At that point, he began to wonder what he would say to Joanna, how he would explain a two-hundred-mile ride out of the way of the place the army was to meet the king. In fact, he had begun to wonder why he had come. |
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However, his arrival was not in the least uncomfortable. Joanna was openly delighted to see him. She had run down into the bailey to greet him and had received his news of her family's safe arrival with thanks and pleasure. So strong had been her assumption that Roselynde was now Geoffrey's home, that it was the most natural thing in the world that he come there and that she serve him, that there had been no awkwardness at all. Even being undressed and bathed by Joanna instead of the maids had seemed perfectly natural; there was no sense of newness or strangeness, although it was the first time. No touch of heightened color in Joanna's cheek had given evidence of conquered embarrassment or of a thought beyond the words she spoke. Why then, sitting at ease five feet from her, was he suddenly as aware of her physical being as if she had been dancing naked? |
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It did not occur to Geoffrey that he was responding to Joanna's own awareness of him. When she had welcomed him so warmly the previous day, it had been as a well- |
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