Page 2 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

She knew ex­actly who “el duque” was, even though there were a dozen or so dukes in the is­land coun­try of Cal­eva. Their client was Gabriel Joaquin Her­rera y Lan­cien, the Duke of Bencalor, nephew to the king and third in line for the Dragon Throne. Even though she’d never met him, she felt like she knew him from the hours of video she had watched of his de­brief­ing af­ter his ab­duc­tion a year ago. It had been heart-wrench­ing to hear him re­count the hor­rors of his cap­tiv­ity. The help­less de­spair of be­ing un­der some­one else’s con­trol had crashed through her again as she’d lis­tened. She knew how that felt.

But her job was to track down his kid­nap­pers. So she’d grit­ted her teeth and shoved the mem­o­ries back into their dark cor­ner, not­ing any de­tails in his de­brief­ing that would help her in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

She shouldn’t talk to the duke. Her boss was the one who dealt with mem­bers of the royal fam­ily face-to-face. Ex­cept that this morn­ing her boss’s four­teen-year-old daugh­ter had spiked such a high tem­per­a­ture that she’d landed in the hos­pi­tal. Mikel, a sin­gle dad, had gone with her. Quinn felt a fleet­ing zing of envy for the teenage girl whose scary, pow­er­ful fa­ther would drop ev­ery­thing to take care of her.

How­ever, that left Quinn with a prob­lem.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Quinn mut­tered. She couldn’t leave el duque on hold much longer. She lifted her gaze to Emilia’s wor­ried face. “Did you tell him Mikel isn’t here?”

Emilia shook her head. “That’s your job,” she said with rel­ish. Emilia didn’t ap­prove of Quinn, mostly be­cause Quinn was an Amer­i­can work­ing on a highly sen­si­tive Cal­e­van mat­ter. Not to men­tion that Quinn wore jeans and T-shirts to work and had a Tony Stark bob­ble­head on her desk.

“Dou­ble shit.” Quinn reached for the phone with the same wari­ness as she would ap­proach a poi­sonous snake. Not that they had any here on Cal­eva. It was like Ire­land that way.

“Buenos días, Ex­ce­len­tísimo Señor.” She care­fully enun­ci­ated the full hon­orific, mostly to give her­self time to con­tinue her de­bate about what to tell him. “This is Quinn Pier­son, Mr. Silva’s, er, col­league.”

“Buenos días, Señorita Pier­son. Call me Gabriel, please.” That voice was the same vel­vet bari­tone as in the videos, only deeper and less an­guished.

She pulled her fo­cus back to her dilemma. Mikel knew Gabriel would be call­ing to­day, be­cause he called once a month to check on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of his kid­nap­ping. The duke would ex­pect her boss to be here. Quinn de­cided that hon­esty was the best pol­icy. “Mikel isn’t here right now. His daugh­ter had a med­i­cal emer­gency.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.” Gabriel’s con­cern sounded gen­uine. “I don’t wish to pry, but how se­ri­ous is it?”

The hell with dis­cre­tion. A royal duke was ask­ing. “A bad flu. She’ll re­cover, but her fever got dan­ger­ously high, so Mikel had to take her to the hos­pi­tal.”

“El Hos­pi­tal Real?”

“Yes.” Mikel worked al­most ex­clu­sively for the royal fam­ily, so he had ac­cess to the best med­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties in the coun­try, in­clud­ing the Royal Hos­pi­tal.

“Ser­ena will get ex­cel­lent care there, but I’ll check in on her just the same,” Gabriel said.

Quinn was back to her dilemma. She took a deep breath, but he spoke again. “I was call­ing to see if there has been any progress in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.” His in­quiry was po­lite and noth­ing more. Up to this point, there had been no progress to re­port. That had changed just a few days ago.

Quinn stared at her bob­ble­head. Did she tell the duke or wait for Mikel? Her boss might not re­turn to the of­fice to­day if Ser­ena didn’t im­prove. “I—um, we might have a lead on one of the kid­nap­pers.” She stopped, not sure how much more to re­veal.

“You said ‘might.’ How real is this lead?” he asked, his voice sharp.

She couldn’t tell if he wanted it to be real or not. “I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t think it was solid. Mikel checked all of my work and agrees with me.”

“How long have you known about this lead?”

“A few days. Mikel wanted to con­firm the sources.” She’d spent months putting to­gether all the in­for­ma­tion but had reached cer­tainty only a cou­ple of days ago. “It’s just one kid­nap­per, but it’s a start.”

“I would rather that it be fin­ished.” His voice was tired. “I’ll come to your of­fice, and you can tell me all of it. I’ll be there in twenty min­utes.”

He dis­con­nected be­fore she could say any­thing else.

“Emilia!” Quinn wailed. “El duque is com­ing here. Help!”

Of course Emilia would know how to pre­pare for the ar­rival of a royal duke: line up ev­ery bev­er­age the of­fice had on hand along with a gi­ant tray of tapas she had threat­ened a nearby café into de­liv­er­ing in ten min­utes flat.

“Do you curtsy to a duke?” Quinn asked as they stood wait­ing in the small re­cep­tion area. “Never mind. I’m an Amer­i­can. We don’t curtsy.”

“Not even to the king?” Emilia was shocked.

“Maybe to him.” If she ever met him. El Rey Luis—Gabriel’s un­cle—spoke with Mikel only by phone, and that was on an ul­tra-se­cure line. Oth­er­wise, Mikel went to the king.

“I curtsy to el duque,” Emilia said, nod­ding so her smooth dark hair glinted in the light. “Not only for his rank, but for his courage.”

“Fine. I’ll give him a lit­tle bow when I shake hands,” Quinn said. The duke had put him­self in the kid­nap­pers’ hands in or­der to pro­tect his cousin, the crown prince, so he de­served her re­spect.

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