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Page 122
lines between his brows. "I think it is more my place to say I am sorry. It seems to me I was not overcivil last night, nor yet just now."
"Last night you were drunk," Joanna said with a shrug. "I knew it. And today" she raised her eyes to his, "today you are troubled with something of note."
"You may say that more than once," Geoffrey replied bitterly. "I have been listening to a pack of old foolsmy father includedtalking of how they will conquer Wales by bringing Lord Llewelyn to a pitched battle and capturing him."
"That is ridiculous," Joanna cried. "Even I know"
"You," Geoffrey snarled, "are a fool of a girl, and I am boy-child swollen with unmerited honor who needs still to be at my nurse's knee, according to the king. How can what we know be of merit?"
"But did you say nothing? Did you not point out that no one has ever brought the Welsh to a great battle?"
"I did not have time to point out anything. As soon as I raised my voice, I was scolded like a child and sent from the room, I"
"Stop, Geoffrey," Joanna protested, quite alarmed at the color his face had turned. "There is no sense in raging against the king. You know him to be a churl and a fool. Let us rather consider what we can do to soften the ill that will fall upon us. Come, walk with me in the cool of the garden. Do not think upon that idiot's mouthings."
"There is nothing I can do! I am twenty. They have spent their lives making war."
The very truth of what he said was calming. He had known the council would not listen. It was sheer bad chance that not one lord of the Welsh Marches was present. Every man there had fought amost exclusively in France or in small private battles in England. None could really imagine what Wales was like, especially in the western parts. And as for the kinghe never missed a chance to sneer at anyone if he could find it.

 
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