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"And you, I suppose. Are you going to blame yourself for this, too?" She sounded angry now. |
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"Should I not have seen this in him years ago?" He dipped his head forward and closed his eyes, letting the despair, so familiar to him now after so many incidents, take hold of his insides and compress his very entrails. "I do not understand why this happened. Does be hate me?" |
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"Yes," came the faint reply from below. Dry lips were drawn back over Ainsley's irregular teeth, and his eyes remained tightly closed, as though to hold in his pain. He was nearly as pale as the bloodstained white shirt once had been. |
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"Why?" Thorn braced himself to hear, should Ainsley continue. |
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A brittle sound came from his old friend that Thorn interpreted as a laugh of irony. "You were the son of the lord of the manor," he rasped. "I was the son of the village storekeeper." |
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Astonishment flooded Thorn. "With two brothers above me, I could never inherit. And you and I were compatriots." He needed to know more, much more. But he had to stop the bleeding. He returned to the job of slowly stripping away clothing that had already begun to stick to the wound. |
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Ainsley winced, and Thorn eased off. "One brother died." Ainsley's rasping voice sounded snide to Thornor was it pain making him smile? |
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"Had you something to do with his death?" The words erupted involuntarily, but he'd no time to rue them. There was the wound. Thorn sucked in his lips. It appeared ragged and deep and close to the heart. And, if he was any judge, fatal. |
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"Here." Mariah was again beside Thorn. She had stripped off the bottom of her skirt, tom it into rags and soaked it in river water. "We'll try something cleaner later, and maybe some bread mold, too. But this is the best I can do for now." |
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As always, she was resourceful. Dependable. |
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