Page 18 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

She laughed with a bit­ter edge. “All over the place. We moved con­stantly. I have no roots.” She an­gled to­ward him in her seat. “Whereas you have roots that go back cen­turies. How does that feel?”

“Nor­mal.” He was star­tled by the ques­tion.

“Well, it isn’t. It’s so dif­fer­ent from the U.S., even though Cal­eva is only a cou­ple of hun­dred years older. We’re all about mo­bil­ity and democ­racy and what’s new on the hori­zon. Cal­eva seems like an old Eu­ro­pean coun­try. A king. Dukes.” She waved in his di­rec­tion. “Maybe it’s be­cause our set­tlers were rebels, crim­i­nals, and out­casts. Even the rich ones were the guys their fam­i­lies wanted to wash their hands of.” She grinned. “I think we’re per­versely proud of that.”

“That is per­verse,” Gabriel said. “We had our share of pi­rates, you know.”

“They weren’t the found­ing fa­thers, though. So who’s your fa­vorite an­ces­tor?”

She was quite adept at de­flect­ing at­ten­tion from her­self. But her ques­tion in­trigued him, so he de­cided to an­swer it. “My great-great-grandaunt, Gabriela, la Mar­quesa de las Olas, whom I’m named af­ter, more or less. She com­manded a ship in the Royal Cal­e­van Navy in the sev­en­teenth cen­tury.”

“I like her al­ready.”

“She was con­sid­ered a ge­nius at naval strat­egy and won a few sea bat­tles with­out any ca­su­al­ties. On the Cal­e­van side, at any rate.”

“And, of course, that’s all your his­to­ri­ans cared about.”

That was cer­tainly true of his fa­ther. He hes­i­tated for a mo­ment be­fore say­ing, “She was also a well-known mu­si­cian, singing and play­ing the pi­anoforte and gui­tar.” Which was the other rea­son she was his fa­vorite. It had given his am­bi­tion to be a gui­tarist some small le­git­i­macy in the eyes of his fa­ther.

“A woman of many tal­ents. Did she have any chil­dren?”

“Only one daugh­ter, un­for­tu­nately. We could use more like her in our fam­ily.”

“I guess the ser­vants took care of the lit­tle girl while Mom was off fight­ing,” Quinn said.

He glanced side­ways to find her head turned away from him. “She had a fa­ther too.”

“You don’t think el mar­qués changed di­a­pers, do you?” she scoffed. “Did your mother change your di­a­pers?” She made a stran­gled sound and waved a hand as though to erase her sec­ond ques­tion. “Scratch that. It’s none of my busi­ness.”

So her par­ents were prob­lem­atic in some way. “I don’t re­mem­ber it, of course, but I’m told my mother was quite com­pe­tent at di­a­per duty. My fa­ther, not so much. Of course, my mother is com­pe­tent at vir­tu­ally any­thing she does.”

“Your mother is a sort of am­bas­sador for Cal­eva, isn’t she? I guess that’s like your an­ces­tor Gabriela in a way.”

“I never thought of it, but you’re right. How­ever, they are not blood rel­a­tives. My mother is from France.”

“So that’s how you know about the café?”

And she had neatly brought the con­ver­sa­tion back to the in­nocu­ous sub­ject of lunch. “Ma­man could learn a thing or two from you.”

She jerked her head around to stare at him. “A diplo­mat learn from me? You’re kid­ding, right?”

“Maybe ‘diplo­matic’ is not the right de­scrip­tion, but you are very skilled at not talk­ing about a sub­ject you wish to avoid.”

“Oh, well, any­one can man­age that.”

He thought of all the times he’d tried to avoid talk­ing to the king or Raul or Mikel about his ab­duc­tion and been forced to share feel­ings he would have pre­ferred to con­ceal. “It’s harder than you think.”

“Talk­ing about your par­ents made me re­al­ize some­thing,” Quinn said. “They’re still alive, but you’re a duke. Is there some­thing higher than a duke that’s your fa­ther’s ti­tle?”

“You just proved my point,” he said. “With a topic change that you know I will find ir­re­sistible.”

He saw the lit­tle smirk she gave at her hands where they rested in her lap be­fore she turned a wide-eyed look of in­quiry to­ward him.

“But I’d re­ally like to know,” she said.

“That’s the trap, isn’t it? Your in­ter­est is gen­uine.” He dodged around a car dawdling—in his opin­ion—in the fast lane. “My fam­ily in­her­its two duca­dos. When the first child reaches the age of six­teen, he or she re­ceives the Ducado of Bencalor. It has dwin­dled over the years to just an es­tate, which in­cludes a manor house, farm­land, and a bed-and-break­fast. The in­come de­rives mostly from the geo­ther­mal en­ergy gen­er­ated there. My par­ents con­tinue to con­trol the Ducado of Bruma, which has sig­nif­i­cant real es­tate hold­ings.”

“A daugh­ter can in­herit the ti­tle? That’s very for­ward think­ing.”

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