Page 10 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“You are a sur­pris­ing young man,” his un­cle said. “But then, you al­ways have been. You proved that when you sac­ri­ficed your­self for my son.”

Gabriel didn’t want to be de­fined by some­thing he’d done when he was twenty-eight years old. Yet, in truth, he hadn’t ac­com­plished any­thing mem­o­rable in the past year.

“Raul still feels guilty.” Gabriel touched his ear­lobe. “No mat­ter what I say to him.”

His un­cle blew out a breath. “Nor what I say. He does not fully un­der­stand that you acted out of re­spect for the crown, not just out of your love for him.” The king’s face sagged into lines of sor­row. “You are the first per­son who has been hurt to pro­tect him be­cause he is the prince. But you will not be the last, and he must learn to carry that bur­den.”

“I wish he would lay it down when it comes to me.” Gabriel couldn’t keep the bit­ter­ness out of his voice. When Mikel had told him he needed to talk with some­one, Gabriel had felt a sharp jab of grief that, be­fore his kid­nap­ping, Raul would have been the per­son he trusted to lis­ten to his con­fes­sion.

“Give him time.”

Gabriel nod­ded out of re­spect for his un­cle and his king, not be­cause he be­lieved that time would fix this prob­lem.

Luis looked down at his folded hands for a long mo­ment be­fore he lifted his gaze to Gabriel’s again. “I know you and Raul feel I am be­ing un­rea­son­able in my re­quire­ment that you re­main here while Mikel hunts your kid­nap­pers. The truth is that it would cause me ex­treme pain to lose ei­ther one of you. I am ask­ing you to stay on Cal­eva for my sake, not for yours.”

Al­though Gabriel didn’t doubt that his un­cle cared about him, the king was a mas­ter ma­nip­u­la­tor. He had made it al­most im­pos­si­ble for Gabriel to leave now.

But that gave him an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­nity to hit his un­cle up for a job.

“Sir, as you know, I have been man­ag­ing the Bruma and Bencalor es­tates since the kid­nap­ping.” Es­tates that did not need his over­sight since they had very ca­pa­ble stew­ards. “I feel it is time that I do more than that. I would like to of­fer my ser­vices to you in what­ever ca­pac­ity you feel I would be most use­ful.”

It sounded ridicu­lously vague, but Gabriel had no idea what kind of job he wanted—or was ca­pa­ble of do­ing. He had stud­ied mu­sic and done a year of mil­i­tary ser­vice, not the most prac­ti­cal prepa­ra­tions for as­sist­ing a king. Nor did he know what his un­cle truly needed. He had planned to be more pre­pared for this con­ver­sa­tion, but the rev­e­la­tions of the day had pushed him into this pre­ma­turely.

Luis gave him a search­ing look be­fore he breathed out a sigh of res­ig­na­tion. “You will be an in­valu­able as­set to me and to Cal­eva.” The king con­sid­ered for a mo­ment, his gaze fo­cused on an an­tique globe. “As it hap­pens, I have a task for you. It’s thank­less, though.” He leaned back in his chair. “You are aware of the group of no­bles who have been ag­i­tat­ing to have own­er­ship of the lily fields re­turned to them.”

“They claim that the lily fields were taken from their pre­de­ces­sors by the crown through il­le­gal means.” Gabriel shrugged. “Of course, their as­ser­tion has no va­lid­ity. The old no­bles do­nated the fields to your fa­ther’s na­ture con­ser­vancy with­out any ques­tions since they got sub­stan­tial tax cred­its from it.”

“They now say that my fa­ther some­how knew the lilies were valu­able and con­cealed the in­for­ma­tion from them. There­fore, the do­na­tion should be in­valid.”

“Did your fa­ther have any idea about the po­ten­tial of the lilies?” Gabriel was not privy to all the king’s se­crets.

“If he did, he kept it from me.” The king’s tone was dry. “Your fa­ther is the one who prompted me to get sci­en­tists in­ter­ested in ex­per­i­ment­ing with the lilies.”

“My fa­ther?” Gabriel couldn’t imag­ine Lorenzo hav­ing any in­ter­est in sci­ence.

“His­tory has its uses. Dur­ing his aca­demic re­search in the Cal­e­van ar­chives, he came across many men­tions of the medic­i­nal prop­er­ties of the lily sap. We both thought it was worth a shot.”

“Maybe el Rey Carlo saw the same men­tions and fig­ured he’d hedge his bets by tak­ing over the fields,” Gabriel spec­u­lated.

“I pre­fer to be­lieve that he cared about our ecosys­tem and saw the lilies as cru­cial to it.”

In fact, Cal­eva’s lilies had made it a rich coun­try. The sap of the ex­tra­or­di­nary plants stopped the progress of de­men­tia and could give ag­ing skin new elas­tic­ity. The fi­brous stems were made into ex­quis­ite pa­per, while the deep red flow­ers pro­vided a vivid dye for fab­rics made on the is­land and ex­ported to in­ter­na­tional fash­ion houses. The bulbs were left in the ground to pro­duce new lilies. As a cash crop, it didn’t get any bet­ter. So, con­trol of the lily fields meant con­trol of much of Cal­eva’s wealth.

Gabriel scraped an­other bit of in­for­ma­tion out of his mem­ory. “Aren’t the no­bles promis­ing to squeeze more prof­its out of the lilies by sell­ing less for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and more for cos­met­ics? There­fore, more money would flow to the av­er­age Cal­e­van cit­i­zen. Or that is the im­pli­ca­tion.”

“Show me the no­bles’ con­trato, and I will be­lieve that,” Luis said with an un­ma­jes­tic snort.

Tech­ni­cally, the in­come from the lily fields flowed to the crown, but Luis had drawn up and signed the Con­trato de los Lirios, the Lily Con­tract, which promised that, ev­ery year, all prof­its from the Cal­e­van lilies would be dis­trib­uted equally to each res­i­dent of the coun­try. Of course, there had been much legalese in­cluded about who qual­i­fied as a res­i­dent and what de­fined prof­its, but the con­trato had proven pop­u­lar.

“You don’t sup­pose Tante Odette has any­thing to do with this?” Gabriel asked. Since his mother han­dled the yearly con­tract with Ar­cham­beau Cos­met­ics, he heard about his hon­orary aunt’s con­stant pres­sure to in­crease the share of lily sap her com­pany re­ceived.

Luis gave a sharp laugh. “I wouldn’t put it past her to have in­flu­enced them, but she is too sub­tle to get caught.” He shook his head. “At any rate, the no­bles lead­ing the group have re­quested a meet­ing with me. I don’t think it’s wise to give them too much le­git­i­macy be­fore I know what they plan to dis­cuss. You would be the per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tive to make the first con­tact. You’re high in the royal hi­er­ar­chy, and you’re a hero. They can­not be in­sulted by your pres­ence, even if they feel dis­ap­pointed by my ab­sence. Fur­ther­more, your in­ter­ests might be thought to align with theirs since you would be en­ti­tled to a share of the lily fields your­self.”

Gabriel winced in­wardly at the word hero. He hated be­ing called that. He hated even more the prospect of be­ing pulled into the kind of po­lit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions this sit­u­a­tion would re­quire. The mus­cles at the back of his neck tensed. How­ever, he had asked for a job, and he couldn’t ar­gue with his un­cle’s ra­tio­nale for choos­ing him to take on this one.

“I would be hon­ored to rep­re­sent you,” he said.

The king laughed. “You look like you’ve bit­ten into a lemon, but you would be do­ing me a real ser­vice.”

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