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Page 361
of a maid was supposed to drug it so it would sleep, but I suppose she did not give it enough."
While he spoke and got back into bed, Joanna undid the cord that fastened the small sack. Immediately, a tortoise-shell kitten popped out. It was pretty and in high dudgeon at the indignity just visited upon it, but as Joanna bemusedly stroked it and tickled it under the chin it regained its equanimity and began to purr.
"But Geoffrey," Joanna protested, "why is it here? I mean, it is a very odd thing to find a kitten tied to the bed straps. It"
"What the devil is wrong with you?" Geoffrey snarled. "If you had not bled, what did you think I would do? Isabella has been taunting me for days. Did you not see her look me over, hair by hair, and cry out to all that there was not so much as an unhealed scratch on me. Where could I draw blood that she would not have marked it? She looked you over too. I would have bled the cat while it slept and"
He never got to finish the story and explain how he proposed to get rid of the evidence. Joanna flung her arms around his neck. "Oh Geoffrey, Geoffrey, I will be a good wife to you. I will be good and obedient and faithful until the day I die, I swear it. You are so kind"
"What a fool you are, Joanna," he said softly, holding her tight against him and pulling her down. "You are truly mine now. Did you think I would let anyone hurt you in any way for any reason?"
The last words were muffled against her throat. A brief panic combined of memory of pain and of her previous inability to respond to Geoffrey's caress was routed immediately by the warmth that spread from the touch of his lips. Joanna sighed and the tenseness went out of her muscles. Gently, Geoffrey pulled his arms from under her limp body to give him freedom of movement. He continued to kiss her for a while, then lifted his head to look at her. She made a tiny, complaining murmur when the caress stopped, and her eyes opened slowly.

 
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