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So the mighty Thorn had deigned to thank her. Hurrying away from him, her arms again filled with laundry, Mariah figured she should have been grateful for Thorn's small showing of gratitude. |
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Instead, it made her angry. |
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That and his pity. How dare he stare at her hands! |
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Those poor, burned, shriveling hands. |
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Flexing them slightly beneath their load of laundry, she nearly sobbed aloud at the pain. Had it been only yesterday she'd been proud of her hands? |
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Of course, she'd been in her own time then. Now she was living a dream. |
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One where she thought she knew what was to occur, only to have it come out different. Skewed. Worse. |
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Thorn had kissed her again. She still felt the erotic pressure on her mouth. Her knees weakened at the very thought. |
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She had to remind herself that he was not Matilda's Thorn, and she, unfortunately, was not Matilda. |
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What would it have been like to be loved by a reliable Thorn? |
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Well, she would never know, and she refused to feel sorry for herself. She dropped the load of René's shirts on the ground beside the washtub, careful to avoid the mud she'd made earlier by sloshing water over the sides. She knelt and tested the water. It was, of course, tepid. |
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She grabbed one of the wooden buckets she'd used to fill the tub and dipped out more than half, carrying each load around the half-built palisade to the seam of land where the clearing met the forest. She emptied the bucket at the edge of the encroaching trees and brush. Then, after filling several buckets from the nearby stream, she began the tedious task of heating the fresh water over the kitchen fire. |
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Eventually, the washtub was again filled with hot water. Mariah knelt on the ground, gathering her skirt close to avoid the mud, and began to scour René's shirts against the washboard. She gritted her teeth against the renewed stinging of her tender hands. But that was all right. Physical pain was |
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