Page 19 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“We try to move with the times.” She snorted, which amused him. “Do you find Cal­eva back­ward, then?”

“It’s a weird mix of mod­ern—like your geo­ther­mal en­ergy plants—and, er, tra­di­tional— like your king.” She shifted in her seat.

“And our dukes.” He couldn’t re­sist the dig.

“The dukes seem pretty harm­less.”

He laughed. “So you don’t mind no­bil­ity as long as they have no ac­tual power.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“But you’re wrong. As a duke, I can be elected to the Con­sejo de los Señores. I think you’d call it the Coun­cil of Lords. We draft the laws that the Con­sejo de los Ciu­dadanos—the Coun­cil of Cit­i­zens—votes on and the king ex­e­cutes.”

“Have you drafted any laws yet?”

Her tone was not sar­cas­tic, yet he felt a sharp jab of guilt. Here was a way he could help his un­cle. If he ran, he was vir­tu­ally guar­an­teed to be elected in his dis­trict.

How­ever, even the mi­nor task of deal­ing with a del­e­ga­tion of whin­ing no­bles wrapped him in a thick, gray fog of bore­dom and de­spair. The vi­sion of a fu­ture filled with an end­less suc­ces­sion of such meet­ings was mind-numb­ing. He didn’t take de­light in the po­lit­i­cal ma­neu­ver­ing his un­cle and cousin sa­vored like a fenc­ing match.

Nor did he have the skill to be ef­fec­tive, in his opin­ion. Why Luis had given him this job con­founded him. There had to be some other task he would be more suited to. Even a po­si­tion that in­volved work­ing with num­bers. Like many mu­si­cians, he was good at math­e­mat­ics.

“I am not a mem­ber of the con­sejo, so I have no laws to my credit…or dis­credit.”

She fell silent, so he couldn’t tell what she thought of his re­sponse. He was sur­prised to be so con­cerned about her good opin­ion.

How­ever, he was be­gin­ning to like this woman who could keep her own coun­sel.

Chap­ter 7

Quinn heard an edge of un­hap­pi­ness in the duke’s re­sponse, so she de­cided to change the sub­ject again. She pointed to the right. “Isn’t that Mont Ridée, where the sec­ond King of Cal­eva dodged a French am­bush by es­cap­ing down a lava tube?”

“You are well versed in Cal­e­van his­tory,” the duke said.

She turned her gaze back to the duke and his fast, sexy car, which she wished she had the nerve to drive. Al­though watch­ing his strong hands wrap around the wheel and his thigh mus­cles flex as he shifted gears was quite a plea­sure. She also en­joyed the oc­ca­sional stolen glance at his pro­file with that strong, sharp nose, sen­su­ally curved lips, and dark, wav­ing hair.

A girl could look, just not touch.

What were they talk­ing about? Oh, the moun­tain and its lava tubes. “I’m au­dit­ing a class at the uni­ver­sity.”

“With Pro­fes­sor Or­tiz, by any chance?” he asked.

“Yes. Do you know her?” Safe ground at last. She man­aged to keep the con­ver­sa­tion on the uni­ver­sity and Cal­e­van his­tory un­til Gabriel turned off the high­way to wind along the coast road. There the scenery was a le­git­i­mate topic of con­ver­sa­tion be­cause the French re­gion had the most beau­ti­ful beaches in the coun­try, with sil­ver sand that glit­tered in the sun­light, masses of the vaho hi­bis­cus, and old houses built of pale gray stone with red tile roofs.

Gabriel down­shifted with a growl of the en­gine and turned into a drive­way with a dis­creet sign read­ing Auberge du Ser­pent de Mer.

“Are we go­ing to eat or be eaten?” Quinn asked.

Gabriel gave that low, vel­vety vi­bra­tion of a laugh. “You speak French too.”

“It’s not tough to trans­late ‘sea ser­pent.’” She’d learned a smat­ter­ing of sev­eral lan­guages un­der her fa­ther’s tute­lage. He had said the knowl­edge would come in handy, and he hadn’t been wrong. How­ever, his idea of how to use his lin­guis­tic skills was very dif­fer­ent from hers.

Gabriel pulled up at the front door to the charm­ing stone build­ing. A valet raced up and waited while the car’s but­ter­fly doors rose in uni­son. “Mon­sieur le duc,” the young man said as he lit­er­ally bowed.

Gabriel tossed the key fob to the valet. “Take good care of her, Henri.”

He started around the car while Quinn twisted to haul her hand­bag out from be­hind the seat. By the time she had re­trieved it, Gabriel stood be­side her, his hand out­stretched to help her out of the low ve­hi­cle.

She re­mem­bered her look, don’t touch ad­mon­ish­ment and braced her­self. Not only did she have to touch his hand—the heat and silk of his skin send­ing a rip­ple of elec­tric­ity up her arm—but she stood up so close to him that she saw the faint shadow of shaven whiskers along his jaw­line and smelled a sub­tle waft of berg­amot and ve­tiver. She stepped back and banged against the car’s roof.

---