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Page 297
She had predicted so many things on her blotted sheet of paper, all from the play she said she had read.
He actually had begun to believe her. She had come to him from the future, perhaps to save him from his own folly.
What was he doing here, on the smokehouse floor? She could be dying, without him there.
He sprang to his feet and ran to his house. René was just leaving it.
"Is she . . . how is she?" asked Thorn, grabbing his old friend by the shoulder.
René shook his head. "There is high fever, and the wound, it seems infected. And those two, those silly women, they send me for bread."

When Thorn burst into the room, Holly was resting her behind on the side of the bed, fretting and holding Mariah's poor, hot hand.
Startled, she half stood, then lowered herself again. "'Bout time you came to see her." She put all the scorn she felt into her words. Didn't he know that he could give Mariah the will to live, to heal if she could, by admitting he loved her?
But this bloke wouldn't do that easily. Holly knew that.
At least she had the satisfaction of seeing how shattered he looked. Those brown eyes of his drooped at the edges, they did, and she'd have guessed he'd grown a whole fan of wrinkles there in the last hour. He'd not have looked half bad with the dark beard that had started to grow, but the hair on his face only showed up the hollows that had begun to dig out his cheeks.
Well, let him suffer, Holly thought. Mariah was suffering, and Thorn hadn't helped enough.
"Is she hungry?" Thorn towered over the bed. "René said you sent him for bread. Should she not have broth instead?"
"The bread's not for eating." Holly stood to face him. "It was Mariah's idea."
"Give her whatever she asks for," he commanded.
As if Holly wouldn't.
He looked down at Mariah. Her eyes flitted open, they

 
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