Page 82 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Right. Per­sonal.” Raul did the star­ing thing again. Fi­nally, he shook his head. “As I said, I was do­ing my mil­i­tary ser­vice then, so I wasn’t around the palace much. I don’t know who was pissed off at Pa­ter then. I wish I could be more help­ful.”

“You’ve given me a cou­ple of threads to tug on,” Quinn said, al­though she didn’t be­lieve any of the names he’d of­fered would lead to any­thing. “If you would con­tinue to think about it, I would be grate­ful.”

“Por supuesto! Of course!”

As Quinn bent to slip her tablet back into her bag, she heard the door open.

“Tante Hélène!” Raul said, his voice warm with af­fec­tion.

Quinn straight­ened to see the prince rise and do the air-kiss thing and then hug a woman of about the king’s age. When the woman dis­en­tan­gled her­self, Quinn re­al­ized with a sink­ing feel­ing that she was Gabriel’s mother, the Duchess of Bruma.

Holy shit! Did the duchess even know about Quinn? She and Gabriel hadn’t had time to dis­cuss it yet. By the time they had both got­ten back to Quinn’s house last night, they’d fought about Dupont, had great makeup sex, and gone to sleep ex­hausted. This morn­ing, she’d left him still slum­ber­ing.

The duchess came to­ward her, a wel­com­ing smile light­ing her aris­to­cratic face. “And this is the won­der­ful young woman who gave mu­sic back to my son.”

Quinn leaped up and tried to curtsy as the duchess reached both hands out to her. Then she held out her hands just as the duchess low­ered hers. Gabriel’s mother trilled a sil­very laugh. “A small cul­ture clash, n’est-pas?” She rested her hands on Quinn’s shoul­ders and leaned in for the air-kiss­ing thing. Quinn froze so she wouldn’t cause any fur­ther prob­lems.

“A plea­sure, Doña Hélène,” Quinn man­aged as the duchess’s per­fume wafted around her. Its fra­grance evoked vaho hi­bis­cus but added notes of the sea and some other flower. The duchess wore a sim­ple navy silk sheath dress with a peach and navy scarf draped around the neck. Her shoul­der-length brown hair glinted with a few sil­ver threads where it swept back from her tem­ples. Gabriel’s hair fell around his face in the same way.

“Thank you for giv­ing Gabriel his life’s pas­sion again,” Hélène said, her voice freighted with past sor­row. “I owe you a debt which can never be re­paid.”

“I only made a sug­ges­tion,” Quinn said gruffly.

The duchess’s gaze roamed over Quinn’s face for a long mo­ment be­fore she turned to Raul.

Quinn heaved a sigh of re­lief and bent to pick up her bag. She would mut­ter a po­lite but brief good­bye and make a quick exit while Raul and his aunt were en­grossed in their con­ver­sa­tion.

But the duchess wasn’t fin­ished with her. “Come sit with me,” she said to Quinn as she sank grace­fully onto a love seat and pat­ted the cush­ion be­side her. “I wish to know such a per­cep­tive woman.”

“Tante, Quinn is here for a work meet­ing,” Raul said, slant­ing a look of amused un­der­stand­ing in Quinn’s di­rec­tion. “She has to get back to her of­fice.”

She could have kissed the prince.

“Of course,” Hélène said with a charm­ing smile. “I should have re­al­ized. We will find a time to have lunch to­gether soon, though, oui?”

“I would be hon­ored,” Quinn said, edg­ing to­ward the door.

As she piv­oted to make a run for it, the door swung open again, and the king strode into the room.

It just keeps get­ting worse.

Quinn dropped a curtsy and si­dled to­ward the door again, hop­ing that Luis wouldn’t no­tice her.

“Señorita Pier­son, one mo­ment, por fa­vor.” Luis pinned her with his gaze so her feet glued them­selves to the floor.

“Yes, Su Ma­jes­tad.”

The king turned to­ward the duchess, his face lit with wel­come. “Hélène! I just heard you were here. What a won­der­ful sur­prise!”

“I ar­rived from Bruma only a few min­utes ago, Luis.” The duchess and the king shocked Quinn by ac­tu­ally kiss­ing each other’s cheeks as they hugged. “I have de­cided to spend more time in the palace since my two fa­vorite young men live here.” She twin­kled at Raul.

“That is good news,” Luis said, al­though a slight shadow crossed his face be­fore he smiled again. “We miss you when you’re away.”

“I came to find Raul and was for­tu­nate enough to also en­counter my son’s good friend.” She made a grace­ful ges­ture of in­clu­sion to­ward Quinn. “But I’ve al­ready in­ter­rupted one busi­ness meet­ing, so I should not keep all of you any longer.”

“I have a few min­utes be­fore my next meet­ing,” Luis said be­fore turn­ing to Quinn. “My apolo­gies, señorita. I would like to in­vite you and Gabriel to din­ner here at the palace on Sun­day.”

Panic sent her brain into a spin. The king must know about her and Gabriel, be­cause Mikel would have told him, but it wasn’t as though she and Gabriel were about to get en­gaged. Maybe this was an in­vi­ta­tion to her in her pro­fes­sional ca­pac­ity? But Mikel briefed the king daily on ev­ery­thing re­lated to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, so why would Luis want to talk to her about it?

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