Page 140 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Gabriel waited, flex­ing his fin­gers to ease the fa­tigued mus­cles, not sure where this was go­ing. He turned to seek out Quinn, who looked so small in the midst of all the empty seats. She looked wor­ried, but she smiled and flashed him a thumbs-up. So Quinn. An emo­tion he couldn’t quite name surged in his chest.

“Hey, Roberto, bring me a cou­ple of ca­pos,” Marisela called out, yank­ing his at­ten­tion back to her.

The man who had let them into the the­ater am­bled onto the stage and handed Marisela the clamps that would change the length of the gui­tar strings. She tossed one to Gabriel. “We’re go­ing to play ‘La Bar­rosa’ as a duet.” She grinned. “Capo on the sec­ond fret, in case you’ve for­got­ten.”

He re­mem­bered. The piece by Paco de Lucía was con­sid­ered a clas­sic in the fla­menco reper­toire. But could he still play it?

“Is this a test?” he asked as he clamped the capo over the strings.

“A road test, maybe,” she said with a shrug. “I want to try out my new gui­tar.”

But he didn’t be­lieve that. She had a chal­leng­ing gleam in her eye.

He let her play solo on the quiet open­ing bars, then joined her as the mu­sic picked up tempo. He watched her hands, let­ting the mus­cle mem­ory carry him through the oc­ca­sional vague spot. Then she be­gan to weave vari­a­tions over, un­der, and around his melodic line. In the back of his mind, he heard some­one clap­ping to the twelve-beat rhythm, but his fo­cus was on Marisela. Sud­denly, she dropped back into uni­son with him. When he raised his gaze to her face, she gave him that chal­leng­ing look again and nod­ded to his gui­tar.

She wanted him to cre­ate the vari­a­tions. He stayed with her for an­other bar while his mind took flight into pos­si­bil­ity.

He stilled his fin­gers while he waited for the open­ing, al­low­ing the beauty of Marisela’s artistry to fill the air alone. He took a breath and sent his fin­gers rac­ing over the strings to in­ter­twine his notes with hers, teas­ing, taunt­ing, join­ing, and pulling apart.

Joy surged through him, lend­ing his fin­gers wings. He threw back his head and closed his eyes so the mu­sic could wrap him in its em­brace. It moved through his body like the blood in his veins.

And then it was over, both of them hit­ting the fi­nal flour­ish in per­fect uni­son.

For a mo­ment, there was si­lence. He kept his eyes closed so he could bask in the mem­ory of the mu­sic. Then a smat­ter­ing of ap­plause star­tled him into open­ing them to find peo­ple stand­ing around the edge of the stage, clap­ping. It grew louder, and a cou­ple of them called out, “Así se toca!”

“Así se toca! That’s how to play,” Marisela agreed with a slap of ap­proval against her gui­tar.

Cer­tainty hit him in a blaze of blind­ing white light. It didn’t mat­ter what Marisela or the stage­hands or his teacher, An­to­nio, thought. He was go­ing to play for the rest of his life. With an au­di­ence, with­out an au­di­ence. He didn’t give a shit.

Ex­cept for Quinn. He stood and piv­oted to face her, us­ing one hand to lift his gui­tar above his head in tri­umph. “You were right!” he shouted. “I am a to­caor!”

He looked mag­nif­i­cent, a tall fig­ure all in black, the sweat on his face and the wood of his gui­tar gleam­ing in the spot­light, as he held the in­stru­ment high.

Quinn clapped wildly while tears streamed down her cheeks. Marisela had listed all his short­com­ings, but to Quinn, his per­for­mance had been gor­geous and charged with emo­tion. One piece had twisted her heart with its yearn­ing. An­other had fired her blood with pas­sion. The third had seared her lungs with its anger and gut-wrench­ing fear.

It wasn’t un­til the duet, though, that she saw him truly let the mu­sic take him out of him­self. His so­los had been set pieces, care­fully pre­pared and per­formed to im­press the to­caora. How­ever, when he’d played with Marisela, his pos­ture had changed from tense to fluid, his back bend­ing and flex­ing, his face in­can­des­cent with sheer plea­sure.

He had found it again—his joy, his pas­sion, his des­tiny.

She had helped him on his path, and that would have to be her re­ward. Where he would go now, she couldn’t fol­low. With his tal­ent, he would soar to a strato­sphere where she would be un­able to breathe the air.

She would watch him fly and be happy for him, even as her heart shud­dered with loss.

“Así se toca!” she shouted along with the rest of them.

“Marisela’s right. You’re crazy,” Quinn hissed un­der her breath as she walked up the the­ater’s aisle be­side Gabriel. “That gui­tar you gave her for free is worth a small for­tune.” Mikel had told her about the value of the Tor­res in­stru­ment.

“What she gave me is price­less,” Gabriel said, sling­ing his arm around Quinn’s shoul­ders as they en­tered the the­ater lobby. “The gui­tar is noth­ing com­pared to the debt I owe her.”

He was vi­brat­ing with ex­ul­ta­tion, so she closed her mouth on fur­ther ob­jec­tions. Let him sa­vor his lib­er­a­tion from the crip­pling self-doubt. He de­served it. She sup­posed that royal dukes could af­ford to give away ex­pen­sive gui­tars any­way.

“I want to do some­thing spe­cial to cel­e­brate,” Gabriel said. “Go out to din­ner and drink the finest cava from Cat­alo­nia.”

As they reached the en­trance door, it swung open. An­neliese stood out­side, hold­ing it. The bright sun­shine made Quinn squint as they stepped out onto the side­walk.

“We promised Mikel to leave as soon as the au­di­tion was over,” Quinn pointed out.

Gabriel leaned down to press a quick kiss on her lips. “Mikel would not be­grudge—”

---