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matter now. Since there is to be this public celebration, it is just as well that I am a maiden. Geoffrey thought of that." |
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"Then he has more brains than most men," Alinor remarked tartly, "but it is not sufficient to be a maiden. You must prove you are one. Your father had my maidenhead, but not one drop of blood did he have to show for it. I was fortunate that he was not a young man and knew the difference, blood or no blood, between a maid and a woman." |
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"How could that be?" Joanna asked, appalled at the idea that Alinor's failing might be a family characteristic and be passed on to her. Geoffrey, who burned when another man only looked at herwhat would he think? |
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"Who knows?" Alinor replied. "Some women are lightly deflowered, others only with much pain and effort. For those with a delicate maidenhead, riding a horse or a hard fall will tear it. If it is stronger, it will withstand much harsher measures. I knew a woman who needed to be cut with a knife before her husband could mount her properly. Poor man, the jests he endured; the offers he was forced to listen to." |
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"But mother," Joanna put in, not much interested at this moment in the trials of some unknown man. "If I am like you, what will I do? I do not understand. Once Gertrude told me you bled like a wounded man. Yet you said" |
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"Gertrude was exactly right," Alinor interrupted, giggling, "for it was your father who bled for me. Do you remember how hairy he was, Joanna? Perhaps not. Well, he was like a bearonly red and gray, of course. He cut himself just beside his shaft, where the hair was thickest. We thought it just a scratch, only enough to set a few drops on the sheet and on my thighs, but he must have nicked a small vein. When we coupled again, later, the wound opened and near flooded us out of the bed." Alinor laughed and laughed, remembering Berengaria's innocent horror and the knowing eyes and raised brows of Richard's sister Joanna, who was her daughter's godmother. Then she sobered. "Would Geoffrey do as much for you? Could he? I mean, has he a thick enough bush?" |
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