Page 124 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“We need you to fill in some blanks for us, Su Ma­jes­tad,” her boss said.

“Blanks? There are holes you could sail an ocean liner through,” Luis said.

Quinn sank lower in her chair, but Mikel pressed on. “Mo­ti­va­tion is the key to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. You have a his­tory with Made­moi­selle Fontaine that we hope will il­lu­mi­nate our re­search.”

“That his­tory is far in the past. I see no pos­si­ble con­nec­tion to Odette now,” Luis snapped. “Her fight would be with me, not with Gabriel any­way.”

“First, you are very well pro­tected. It would be al­most im­pos­si­ble to kid­nap you,” Mikel said in a rea­son­able tone. “Sec­ond, the kid­nap­pers were aim­ing for el príncipe. If one wishes to strike at the fa­ther, the best tar­get is his child.”

Guilt flashed across the king’s face. “What do you want to know?”

“Has there been any fric­tion about the lily sap con­tract with Made­moi­selle Fontaine’s com­pany, Ar­cham­beau, in the last three years?” Mikel was start­ing with the easy stuff.

Luis rubbed his palm over his face. “Odette al­ways wants more sap, but I think it’s be­come habit rather than ex­pec­ta­tion now. Hélène hasn’t men­tioned any new is­sues.”

“So you haven’t changed the amount of sap her com­pany re­ceives?”

“It’s de­pen­dent on our har­vest, of course, but that’s been steady these last few years. No sig­nif­i­cant fluc­tu­a­tions.”

“How did the ar­range­ment to sell the sap to Made­moi­selle Fontaine come about?” Mikel dug a lit­tle deeper, and Quinn took men­tal notes on his tech­nique.

The king gave Mikel a sharp glance. Ev­i­dently, he had also caught on to her boss’s strat­egy. “I’ll tell you the whole story, so you don’t have to han­dle me.” He leaned back in his chair.

“Af­ter my wife died, I made some bad de­ci­sions. One of them was start­ing a re­la­tion­ship with Odette. She was vis­it­ing Hélène when I was feel­ing…alone. Guilty. Over­whelmed.” He gri­maced. “Odette has a strong per­son­al­ity. I leaned on her when I should have gone to my ad­vis­ers for gov­ern­men­tal ad­vice and my brother for per­sonal sup­port. Odette and I had a tor­rid af­fair for about six months be­fore I re­al­ized who she truly was and broke it off.”

Quinn wanted to ask who he thought Odette was but didn’t have the nerve.

Luck­ily, her boss had plenty of nerve. “What pre­cisely made you end the re­la­tion­ship?”

“How do I ex­plain?” Luis blew out a breath. “Small things added up over time, but what both­ered me most was that when I wanted to spend time with Raul, Odette al­ways had an ex­cuse not to. He was just a baby, and he had lost his mother. I did not wish to leave him with only his nanny. As mis­guided as I was about some things, at least I knew that Raul needed me.”

The king’s voice was heavy with re­gret.

“You have al­ways been an ex­cel­lent fa­ther.” Mikel’s words held no flat­tery, only sin­cer­ity. “The fine man His Royal High­ness has be­come is proof of that.”

“Gra­cias,” Luis said. “But I think Raul saved me, not the other way around.” He shifted in his seat. “When I told Odette our ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ship was over, she was quite an­gry.”

Quinn’s at­ten­tion sharp­ened.

“Did she threaten you?” Mikel asked.

“Not with bod­ily harm,” Luis said. “How­ever, she told me that I would never find a woman who would be a bet­ter queen than she.” The king smiled with­out hu­mor. “Per­haps she was right since I have never found an­other queen at all.”

Quinn had won­dered about that, but the king’s lack of a wife was def­i­nitely not part of her in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“She wanted to be queen, and you thwarted that,” Mikel said in a thought­ful tone.

“But that was nearly thirty years ago,” Luis pointed out. “Since then, she’s made a great deal of money from Cal­eva. Why would she en­dan­ger that?”

“What do you know about Iowa?” Mikel asked. “What rea­son would Made­moi­selle Fontaine have to go?”

“Iowa is in the mid­west­ern United States. I be­lieve they grow soy­beans and corn and raise hogs, none of which would in­ter­est Odette. I’ve never been there.”

It was im­pres­sive that he knew what Iowa’s main crops were, but kings were prob­a­bly in­ter­ested in that sort of thing.

“Which is why her jour­ney there eigh­teen months ago sticks out as an anom­aly,” Mikel said. “Had she been to Cal­eva around that time?”

Luis turned to the sleek com­puter on a smaller desk be­side him and scrolled through sev­eral screens. “The last time Odette vis­ited was twenty months ago, which was be­fore her visit to Iowa.”

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