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Page 249
what. This was one part of the screenplay that wouldn't follow real life.
Next, her notes reflected a raid at the inn by vandals. She'd no sense of why or when that might happen.
Finally, there was the duel. Very finally. And that, too, she had to modify from the script. But how? She needed a workable plan.
A knock sounded on the door. "Mariah? Are you awake?" Without waiting for an answer, Holly pushed open the door and walked in. She stopped, shoving her hands onto her ample, apron-covered hips. "What happened to you?"
"What do you mean?" Mariah felt herself redden. Did it somehow show, her delicious, ill-fated lovemaking with Thorn? She touched her own warm cheek.
"You look like something I saw drowned in the water at the London docks." Holly shook her head so the cap over her pale hair bobbed. "Some big, sad-eyed fish, it was, that had grown too fired to swim."
Mariah threw off her covers and swung her feet over the side of the rustling bed. "You're right. I'm too tired to swim or to do much of anything else. But we've got a lot of people to feed breakfast, so I guess I'd better start my gills humming."
"And your tail swishing," Holly agreed. They both laughed, though Mariah knew that the sound from her mouth was more hollow than mirthful.
Mariah dressed quickly, with Holly's help, in her brown dress and apron. She still couldn't bring herself to wear a cap, though she'd been admonished time and again by Holly that the custom wasn't just based on fashion; it was to keep a woman's hair from being ignited by fire as she worked over the hearth. She had thought of braiding it up. On the other hand, Mariah's hair, though it hung beneath her shoulders, was shorter than most women's in this time.
This time. There it was again, the thread that wove through all of Mariah's thoughts. She didn't belong here. She'd made that clear to Thorn the night before.
She'd a mission to accomplish, though, thanks to that

 
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