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Page 320
But not moldy bread. ''I've had enough of that for a lifetime," Mariah insisted.
He kept the palisade gate bolted; the last thing he wanted was the imposition of guests.
Not even guilt intruded on his euphoria. He had mentioned it one of the first times they had lain in bed, sated and catching their breaths, but Mariah had become angry, sitting up stark naked with her hands on her hips. If that was the way women of the future were, lovely and uninhibited by false modesty, he nearly wished he had been born then.
Except he needed no other woman from the future. He had Mariah.
"Don't you ever, ever tell me again that I can't rely on you," she'd raged at him. "Don't you realize that each time you've told me that, you've saved my life?"
"But" he'd tried to say.
"That very first time we met, you turned your back, but when I hadn't the foggiest what to do with your rifle, you used it and scared off those bums."
"I should have killed them then," he fumed.
"Maybe. But you killed one when it really mattered."
"But you were shot."
"And I'd have been dead if you hadn't gotten them first. Thorn, don't you dare contradict me." She'd put her hand across his mouth, and he'd watched her with amusement as she tugged the sheet over herself, her lovely green eyes scowling at him. "You saved me from Nahtana, not once but twice. And those wolves. All the time you said you weren't dependable, all those times I tried to save myself, you came through. Do you understand?"
"Yes," he'd said meekly, trying to keep the laughter out of his voice. "I understand."
And he believed heralmost. Maybe he had learned something in his exile to the wilderness. For this woman, perhaps, he had learned reliability.
But there was still that other woman he had failed. Who had died. As had those he had failed in England, his own kin.
And would Mariah be reliable for him? He wondered

 
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