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your father should have used his belt on you more often, and if he did not, I should have. Thus are we justly rewarded for our indulgence." |
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Simon had crimsoned so much that tears came to his eyes, and he knelt down before his father. "I am sorry, Papa. You know I did not mean thatnot that you are afraid for yourself." |
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Ian touched the unruly black curls of the bent head. "I know what you meant, and I am not ashamed that I fear for my loved ones. When you have what I have in this family, you will also be less daring. But that is not why I said you were a fool, Simon." |
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"What your father meant," Geoffrey remarked dryly, "was that absenting ourselves from the council can accomplish no purpose beyond angering the king. We have already used that method to no purpose. Now, since Henry will be enraged in any case, it is reasonable to tell him what we think in plain language and anger him that way. If there is to be a measure of bravery, Ian's way is more courageous than sulking from a distance." |
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"You are right about that," Adam put in, his eyes brightening. I was half-minded to go back to Tarring and tell my vassals to close themselves into their keeps, but I like Geoffrey's notion much better. First I will tell the king what I think of him, his ways, and his new favorites, and then I will seal my keeps." |
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"You will need to seal them if that is the way you go about it," Gilliane pointed out tartly. |
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Alinor laughed. "Sometimes you remind me very much of your father, Adam. He could be horribly honest at just the wrong time, so that he ended by running his head into a stone wall." |
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"But not about managing a king, beloved," Ian reproved. |
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"Oh, yes," Alinor insisted. "He crossed the last Henry so unwisely that he was told to go sit on his lands and not stir lest worse befall him." |
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