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Page 141
have been glad if she had agreed to go off with him somewhere so that he could bed her, but her on-again, off-again attitude irritated him, and he was finding the conversation, the need to flatter and plead, very dull. In the past Walter had enjoyed his pursuits, prided himself on the fact that although he had neither wealth or particular beauty, nearly every woman he approached had yielded to him.
This time, however, every time Walter uttered a fulsome compliment, a vision of Sybelle's astonished and amused face would flash across his mind. He could envision her response, too, very like Marie'sexcept that Sybelle would make a caricature of it so that he would burst out laughing. It had happened to, him in Roselynde, soon after he first met her. Not knowing any better, he had tried to woo Sybelle as he wooed other women. Both he and Sybelle had enjoyed themselves very much, but Walter knew that path was no way to Sybelle's heart.
Bored and frustrated, Walter blamed both women: Marie for being dull and coy at the wrong time, and Sybelle for being beautiful, desirable, fascinating, and at the moment unattainable. Then he cursed the injured knee that had kept him from going on the hunt and thus not only condemned him to boredom and frustration but deprived him of watching over Sybelle's safety. Fortunately he did not have much time for these thoughts because Prince Llewelyn's pleasant voice broke into them.
"Am I forever in your black book for dropping those two silly women on you?" he asked.
"No, my lord," Walter replied. "They are silly, perhaps, but I do not see much harm in them. I find them pleasant company."
"You do not look it." Llewelyn laughed. "Or are you angry because they left you?"
"I am angry at myself, my lord," Walter replied, and, induced by some charm Prince Llewelyn seemed to exude that often made people confide in himeven when it would be wiser not to do sotold him about Sybelle having gone boar hunting.
"God! Those women are enough to drive a man madthough I should not say it when my own daughter is as bad or worse." Llewelyn laughed heartily as he dropped into the chair Marie had vacated. "I am fortunate that Simon was

 
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