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Page 341
did not feel right abandoning Sally when she acted so grief-stricken as she told her tale."
"Who told her to seek you out?" Mariah asked. "And did she say who'd seduced her?"
"Well, yes," Thorn said. "She"
"Lies, of course," Ainsley said. "I never touched the wench. If she told you it was me, she was simply"
"What I was about to say, Ainsley, was that she never revealed the soldier's name." Thorn's voice grew as frigid as mountain snow as he pivoted to stare at the man he'd considered his friend. "But I believe you now have. All she named was the man's rank and that he came from England. That would have fit you and several others." He hesitated. "After all that happened, I did not think about her difficulties again until long after she had left Pittsborough, and then it did not matter."
"None of this matters." Ainsley turned from Thorn. "whatever else happened, Will, your mother, sweet Mary Porter, relied upon this man. He let her down, caused her to kill herself. Right here, did you know? He found her body after she had drowned herself here, at the confluence of the rivers."
But Mariah could not let the momentum she'd started stop like that. "Aren't you convinced yet, Thorn?" she said softly. "Ainsley is the one who really wants this duel."
"I? I wish nothing." The soldier's face turned nearly as red as his uniform. "Would you believe the lies of this woman above our friendship, which has lasted so long?"
Thorn did not hesitate. He did not look at Mariah. He simply said, "Yes."
"Enough!" Ainsley cried. "Will, now is the time to avenge your mother's death. Do you, after all this time, wish to lose the opportunity?"
Will, standing closest to the promontory, observed the others with incredulity narrowing his pale green eyes. Fog swirled around his feet. Still, the sky remained a brilliant blue. "I . . . I'm confused, Ainsley," Will admitted.
"Do it! Now!" Ainsley rushed forward, thrusting the gun he held into Will's hand. The young man stared at it dumbly, lowering it so it pointed toward the mist at his feet.

 
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