Page 99 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“We stud­ied it in high school too,” Fer­nanda chimed in. “We had an Amer­i­can teacher who said he moved here be­cause a king was prefer­able to any of their pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.”

The Duke of Bruma sur­prised Quinn with a faint smile. “Of course, I be­lieve our sys­tem is the best, but the U.S. is a mostly func­tional democ­racy which has its own strengths.”

“Pa­ter, how do you feel about monar­chy ver­sus democ­racy?” Raul asked, turn­ing to his fa­ther. “Af­ter all, you have the most per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with the for­mer.”

Quinn couldn’t wait to hear this.

Luis laughed, a deep, rich sound that re­minded her of Gabriel. “My ob­vi­ous bias should re­cuse me from this de­bate.”

“It’s the­o­ret­i­cal only,” Raul said. “No one at this ta­ble is plan­ning a coup.”

Af­fec­tion flowed be­tween the king and the prince like a warm cur­rent. Yet Raul had to wait for his fa­ther to die be­fore he could step into the po­si­tion he had been trained for. If that cre­ated any un­der­ly­ing ten­sion, it wasn’t ev­i­dent at this ta­ble.

How­ever, for all that he was eat­ing a pri­vate meal in the midst of his fam­ily, Luis still seemed set apart, as though he could never quite put down the weight of the crown. A pang of pity for Raul’s fu­ture lanced through Quinn. Did he ever re­sent hav­ing no choice about the path of his life?

“You’re lucky to live in Cal­eva and not France,” Hélène said.

Luis raised his eye­brows in a silent ques­tion.

“No guil­lo­tine here,” the duchess said.

Most of the ta­ble laughed. Even Lorenzo cracked a smile as Luis lifted his hand to touch his neck. “Much bet­ter to be hurled off Acan­ti­lado Alto,” the king said in a dry tone.

“You might get lucky and be the third per­son to sur­vive,” Quinn said with­out think­ing.

“You know about the al­leged sur­vivors?” Lorenzo asked.

“I told her,” Gabriel said.

“Did he also tell you that they got tossed off again?” Luis asked. “So per­haps not so lucky.”

“Quinn’s the­ory is that they should have en­listed them both in the army since they were so tough,” Gabriel said.

“You make a good point, Quinn,” Luis said. “My pre­de­ces­sors weren’t think­ing prag­mat­i­cally.”

“Or their crimes were too se­vere to al­low for a par­don,” Raul said. “Tío Lorenzo, do you know what heinous­ness they had com­mit­ted?”

“The sto­ries are not sub­stan­ti­ated by his­tor­i­cal record,” Lorenzo said. “How­ever, it is ru­mored that one was ac­cused of witch­craft and the other of coun­ter­feit­ing.”

“I’d want a witch on my side in bat­tle,” Quinn said.

“And a coun­ter­feiter could de­stroy an en­emy’s econ­omy by flood­ing it with fake cur­rency,” Gabriel said. “Death by fall­ing and drown­ing seems like an ex­treme pun­ish­ment for that par­tic­u­lar of­fense.”

“Fal­si­fy­ing doc­u­ments was as­so­ci­ated with re­li­gious heresy at that time,” Lorenzo ex­plained. “Hence the sever­ity of the sen­tence.”

“I feel this con­ver­sa­tion has be­come too grim for a fam­ily din­ner,” Hélène said.

“You brought up the guil­lo­tine, Ma­man,” Gabriel pointed out.

The duchess dis­missed her son’s com­ment with a lan­guid wave of her fin­gers. “I saw a mar­velous ex­hi­bi­tion in Paris at the Ate­lier des Lu­mières. They pro­jected im­ages of the paint­ings of Kandin­sky on the walls and floors and turned them into mov­ing im­ages set to mu­sic.”

“I saw that done with Van Gogh’s paint­ings in New York,” Quinn said. “It gave me a whole new per­spec­tive on his work.”

Then she reg­is­tered that Gabriel’s mother had been in Paris. That city kept crop­ping up in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Not that she thought Hélène would do any­thing to hurt her beloved son, but some­one she en­coun­tered there might have. It was an­other thread to add to Quinn’s grow­ing web.

“We should do some­thing sim­i­lar with Cal­e­van artists,” Hélène said. “Per­haps Paulo Sanchez and Marie St. Cloud, to rep­re­sent both el­e­ments of our her­itage.”

“Quinn sug­gested mak­ing art a part of the mu­sic fes­ti­val,” Gabriel said, en­thu­si­asm light­ing his face. “We could even have mu­sic com­posed es­pe­cially for the ex­hi­bi­tion.”

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