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Page 232
vealing uneven teeth. "I'll take anything you'll serve, Miss Walker." He lifted his tankard of ale and said, "To good times and good servants." He took a long swig, smacked his lips and winked.
Mariah almost grinned at the decisively blank expression on Thorn's face that did not quite camouflage the annoyance in his glistening brown eyes. But that would have been a genuine grin, not an actress's smile. It would have required that she push her way out of the fog that surrounded her.
Better that she stay there, desensitized, not caring that she believed she knew who would take Thorn's life.
Unless she were able to right that particular wrong.
She had to. She could not let Thorn die. Not that horrible, preventable way. There was no need for him to fight a duel, no matter what the provocation from the irritating young Will.
Maybe she could start right now to stop what the screenplay had foretold. She shrugged aside the haze that had paralyzed her inside and joined her boss at the food-laden puncheon table. "Mr. Thorn, do you know all the soldiers here?"
He didn't look at her as he said, "No." The starkness of the barked word told her that he didn't want to know them. But his wants did not, at that moment, matter.
"Sergeant Ainsley, would you please introduce everyone?"
Ainsley blinked eyes fringed with sparse lashes. "Well . . . certainly, Miss Walker." His enthusiasm, thought Mariah, was underwhelming. But he dutifully began, table by table, making each man stand as his name was called.
"Good," Mariah said when he was finished. "An innkeeper should know all his guests by name, right, Mr. Thorn?"
Trapped, he gave a brusque nod, but his eloquent stare shouted at her to forget this nonsense and become invisible, like a good servant.
She didn't. "Let's get our guests to help with the dishes. What do you think, Mr. Thorn?" She knew what he thought after their episode with sweet, shy Mrs. Rafferty more than

 
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