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ready to listen to reason with regard to the property. Are you less amenable?" |
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"It would depend on whether what you suggested as reasonable seemed reasonable to me," she retorted with a flash of her normal sauciness. But then she continued seriously, "The ways of Roselynde are long set, and they may not fit with those to which you are accustomed. So it might be that we would differ." |
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"But not quarrel," Walter said, with the first hint of impatience he had shown. "I do not wonder you have doubts about accepting me as a husband if you think me such a fool as to quarrel with you over long-established custom on lands with which I am not familiar." |
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Sybelle's eyes dropped again. "I do not think you such a fool or a fool at all. I think you are a mantruly a man. That is why I fear." |
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"I am lost again," Walter confessed, but the irritation was gone from his voice. The subtle flattery had soothed him. |
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But it was not flattery, and Sybelle, who had been aware of the flicker of impatience, did not perceive why his mood had changed. "Will you not grow tired of a wife always intruding into what you think of as a man's affairs?" she asked nervously. |
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"Why should I?" He smiled at her. "I might grow angry if your intrusions were silly or womanish, but your father assures me that will not be the case. I cannot see that Lord Geoffrey has grown in the least tired of your mother. And I should say, from what I saw in the weeks I spent in Roselynde, that Lord Ian is perfectly besotted on Lady Alinor. They have been married well over twenty years. Why should you hold me less firmly?" |
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"Perhaps I am not as beautiful or clever" |
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Walter's arm, which had relaxed its grip during the conversation, tightened suddenly. "Shame!" he cried, laughing and interrupting her. "Oh, shame, to throw out so plain a lure for a compliment. You know quite well that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. As to cleverof that I am less certain. Surely a clever girl could have found a more subtle way to induce me to tell her what she wished to hear." |
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Sybelle could not help laughing, too, but amid her amusement there was a treacherous warmth, an insistent desire to return Walter's embrace, to taste the mouth smiling down at |
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