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For a moment sat with his mouth inelegantly open. Then he closed it and swallowed. It was true enough that the women of Roselynde were different. They trod without flinching, it seemed, on every ground that a man might consider by right to be his own. Then he found his voice and said, "Surely Sybelle cannot believe that I could be so unkind or, indeed, indecent, as to bring a mistress into her household." |
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"It is far more than that," Joanna pointed out coldly. "I do not believe my daughter would suffer her husband to keep a mistress at allanywhere." |
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Then, while Walter was too stunned to say anything, Joanna rose, nodded farewell, and walked any toward the doorway that led out to the bailey where were the cook sheds. Deprived of a riposte, Walter fumed. Wise or unwise, he could not have refrained from saying plainly that his moral state was a matter between God and himself or his confessor and himself and not a subject with which his wife should be concerned. What Sybelle did not know could not hurt her, and why the devil should she even think of such a thing anyway? |
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The answer came on the heels of the question, and Walter barely bit back a roar of rage. Simon! That thoughtless idiot Simon had always talked to Sybelle about his women and his troubles with them. Waiter ground his teeth. Naturally, Simon did not care if he gave Sybelle the impression that all men were satyrs. All that lunatic wanted had told Walter sowas a woman's point of view from a woman who would not be jealous. |
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Was that what Sybelle had been skirting around when she was talking about the differences in their ways of looking at things? It must have been. The management of lands could not be so very different in Roselynde from elsewhere. Well, at least Sybelle had the delicacy not to state flatly that she wished to make a eunuch of her husband. Yet Lady Joanna had made it abundantly clear that Sybelle would not take it kindly if her little amusements, totally unfitting for a woman, should be curbed. Regardless, his life was to be regulated according to Sybelle's fancies. They would see about that! |
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Walter was furious, but it did not, even fleetingly, pass through his mind that the simplest solution to the problem was not to marry Sybelle. Nor was his determination to have her owing in the least to the fact that he considered himself bound |
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