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Page 278
crackle and roar of the fire was nearer. It was moving fast, very fast.
"Go get your men out of thisthose that still live," Geoffrey ordered. Take them north till you find the ways free and then to my father's house. Wait there for us. I will see to Lady Joanna myself."
He spurred into the lane, not waiting for a reply. Knud stared after him for a moment appalled. Beorn would kill him if anything happened to the lady. It was his duty to keep her safe. It was also his duty to save his men. His eye caught a knot of three men-at-arms struggling against the crowd. He began to force his way forward to them. Lord Geoffrey would take care of Lady Joanna. He had said so, and Knud believed the young lord was well able to fulfill what he promised.
In fact, that confidence was very nearly misplaced. Geoffrey, like most of the people fleeing the fire, would have paid scant attention to the huddle of dark clothes at the bend in the lane. Fortunately, greed overpowered fear in the mind of one of the men who fled the fire. His eye was caught by the metallic glitter of an ornament on the purse fastened to Joanna's belt, and he turned aside to snatch at what he saw. That twisted Joanna's body and her wimple, already unseated by her fall, came away completely, revealing the full glory of her hair.
"Joanna!" Geoffrey bellowed.
He struck the thief dead and came off his horse to snatch Joanna up in his free arm. There was something in the feel of her body that stilled the agony which had gripped his breast and begun to climb into his throat. There was warmth and resilience to it. Geoffrey had lifted enough dead men to recognize the total flaccidity of lifelessness. He clutched her closer and she sighed, "Oh," and then, more strongly with a shade of indignation, "You hurt me."
Relief and rage welled up in Geoffrey simultaneously. He did not know whether he wished to hug Joanna tight and weep with joy or strangle her and scream with rage. More frustrating still, he did not have time for either emotion. A

 
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