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Page 297
ignored this. She would have run out into the woods and spent the day most happily luring wild creatures to her hand or shooting game for the pot or gathering herbs for her lotions and potions.
Instead she was wimpled and gowned with the most rigid propriety and dragged out on a round of visits with Joanna and Gilliane. Rhiannon understood that this was not an idle waste of time. She had displayed the romantic and barbaric aspect of Wales and now had to show that the Welsh could also be proper and civilized. There was information to be seeded and information to be gleaned, rumors to be picked up and those, more suitable to the purposes of Roselynde, to be spread. Rhiannon knew that Gilliane and Joanna were working as hard as their menfolk and toward the same purpose. She judged their efforts both necessary and useful, for she was no fool, and did what she could to assist them. Nonetheless, she found it weary, distasteful work.
Returning to the house tired and irritable, Rhiannon discovered that more of the same awaited her. Since Alinor had received a message from Ian to the effect that all the menfolk would neither dine nor sleep at home, she had invited various women to join her and her daughters. The ostensible purpose was to meet Rhiannon, newly betrothed to Alinor's youngest sonso Rhiannon had no choice but to attend. The real purpose was the same as before, to gain and disseminate information and opinion.
Unfortunately, in a larger group, it was not possible for the ladies of Roselynde to shield Rhiannon as effectively. Politics was not the only thing discussed, or, rather, politics was most often discussed from a personal angle. This resulted in Rhiannon's being innundated with information about who was sleeping with whom. Henry's court was not deliberately licentious the way John's had been; Henry himself was not a lecher. Nonetheless, he was a young, full-blooded man,

 
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