Free King's Ransom by Amelia Autin Page A

down to where they weren’t a raw, open wound. But those wounds he’d inflicted weren’t healed. Scar tissue had formed over them, but they were still tender, still aching to the touch. And she kept touching them. Couldn’t help touching them. “No,” she whispered, dismayed.
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Chapter 5
    S oft footsteps sounded behind Juliana and she whirled. Andre stood there, his face wiped clean of emotion. “Why are you still here, Juliana?” he asked. “Waiting to twist the knife again?”
    She gasped at his unexpected verbal assault and shook her head. “He...he wouldn’t let me out.” She raised a hand, indicating the elderly gatekeeper. “He said you told him to bar the gate.”
    â€œAhhh. I see.” He turned to the gatekeeper and spoke softly in colloquial Zakharan.
    The old man nodded and quickly hobbled over to the gate, unlocked it and swung it wide. He bobbed his head at Juliana and muttered something she didn’t understand, but his apologetic smile told her what he must have meant. “It is nothing,” she assured the man in Zakharan with a smile, knowing it wasn’t his fault. “A simple misunderstanding.”
    She passed through the gate and started to head back the way she came. Then she saw the magnificent black stallion tethered not far away, standing quietly. And just a few paces away was another man on horseback—Andre’s bodyguard, the one she’d wondered about when Andre came to her alone in the cemetery. She knew the stallion had to be Andre’s mount, but she was drawn admiringly to the horse’s side. “Oh, you’re a beauty, aren’t you?” she whispered softly, careful not to startle the animal as she approached. The stallion let her caress his velvety nose, then run her hand along his withers under his ebony mane.
    Forgetting for just a moment, she turned to Andre, not realizing this was the first real smile she’d given him since she returned to Zakhar. “What’s his name?”
    He stared silently down at her as if mesmerized for so long her smile faded into solemnity and she stared back at him. Finally he said, “His name is Charlemagne. He is half brother to Mara’s horses, Alexander the Great and Suleiman the Magnificent.”
    Her brows drew together in a question. “Mara’s horses? But didn’t I read somewhere that Alexander the Great was
your
horse? Didn’t he win the Grand National for you one year?”
    His lips twitched into a faint smile and he made the fencing gesture indicating a hit...and a point. “You are well-informed,” he said. “Yes, Alexander was mine, but no longer. I sold him for a fraction of his value to Mara when she married earlier this year—he was her wedding gift to her husband.”
    â€œMarried?” She tilted her head up in a question. “I don’t remember reading anything about that.”
    â€œNew Year’s Day. Very quiet. Very private. It was Mara’s wish, and I—”
    â€œAnd you could never deny her anything,” she finished for him. “I remember that about you.” She studied him for a moment. “Who did she marry?”
    That faint smile came and went. “An American bastard who does not even know his father’s name.” Shock reverberated through her at his words, then her eyes narrowed in accusing fashion. He accurately read her accusation and explained ruefully, “That is his own definition of himself. I would rather have described him as a man who would give the blood from his veins to keep Mara safe, because she is his whole world.”
    â€œOh, I’m so glad for Mara,” Juliana said swiftly. “I always felt guilty that I—”
    â€œThat you never called her, never wrote to her after the first two months when you went away to college. She suffered under the loss of your friendship, little one. She never said