Page 125 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Was there a par­tic­u­lar rea­son she came here then?” Mikel asked.

Luis swiveled his chair to face them again. “It was a pri­vate visit to cel­e­brate Hélène’s birth­day. I saw Odette at the cel­e­bra­tion party at Bruma, but that was all the con­tact we had. And our en­counter was en­tirely cor­dial.”

“Who else at­tended the party?” Mikel was re­lent­less.

“You’d have to ask Hélène for the whole guest list. I re­mem­ber Raul and Gabriel were there, wear­ing their mili­tia uni­forms be­cause they’d got­ten spe­cial leave for the evening.” Luis seemed to gaze into the past with a faint smile. “They looked so young and so proud of their uni­forms. And so cocky, as fledg­ling sol­diers are. The young women prac­ti­cally fell over them­selves try­ing to cap­ture their at­ten­tion. Of course, I was proud of them too.”

Quinn had seen pho­tos of Gabriel in his Royal Cal­e­van Mili­tia uni­form. He looked, well, gor­geous and hot, even though he’d had to cut his glo­ri­ous hair short. She didn’t blame the women at the party for throw­ing them­selves at him.

“So, a fam­ily party?” Mikel prod­ded.

“Mostly fam­ily,” Luis amended.

“Let’s go back to how the con­tract with Ar­cham­beau came about,” Mikel said.

Luis ran his hand over his face again. He looked tired, and Quinn felt guilty about their in­ter­ro­ga­tion. But bells were go­ing off in her head as the king de­scribed his past with Odette. She was clearly an am­bi­tious woman, and she had missed out on be­ing a queen. That had to ran­kle, even thirty years later.

“Odette was al­ready work­ing for Ar­cham­beau at the time. Dur­ing our af­fair, she asked if she could have a small sam­ple of the lily sap to see if it had any cos­metic prop­er­ties. I saw no harm in it. Af­ter all, we pro­vide sam­ples to sci­en­tists. As you know, she found that it helps ag­ing skin look younger.” He made a wry face. “The claim seems to be true, or so I have been told by women who use Ar­cham­beau’s ab­surdly ex­pen­sive skin cream.”

Quinn had looked up the price of the cream and been flab­ber­gasted. Only very wealthy peo­ple—like Ricci’s wife—could af­ford it. The lily sap had to be mak­ing Odette and her com­pany fab­u­lously rich.

“Be­ing Odette, she ne­go­ti­ated a con­tract that made cos­metic use of the lily sap ex­clu­sive to her com­pany.”

“Given your his­tory, how did Made­moi­selle Fontaine ap­proach you about buy­ing the sap for Ar­cham­beau?” Mikel asked.

“She started by show­ing the re­search re­sults to Hélène and propos­ing a part­ner­ship with Cal­eva. By that time, a year or so had gone by, and the un­pleas­ant­ness sur­round­ing the end of our af­fair had faded some­what. When Odette and I met again, the pro­posal had been re­vised and vet­ted by my fi­nan­cial min­is­ter and Ar­cham­beau’s board, so my sign­ing the con­tract was purely cer­e­mo­nial.”

“I un­der­stand that her dis­cov­ery and con­tract with you vaulted Made­moi­selle Fontaine to the top po­si­tion at Ar­cham­beau,” Mikel said.

Luis nod­ded. “So why would she risk all of her suc­cess by kid­nap­ping Raul?”

“That is the ques­tion we seek to an­swer. She will be vis­it­ing Cal­eva soon. With your as­sis­tance, I would like to threaten her prof­its,” Mikel said. “While she is here, have Raul meet with her to tell her that you have to cut back sig­nif­i­cantly on her quota of lily sap.”

“It would be nat­u­ral for her to be up­set by that, so I don’t know what you will learn,” the king said.

“If we are cor­rect in be­liev­ing she in­sti­gated the ab­duc­tion with its planned mu­ti­la­tion, she will re­act in an ex­treme way to the threat to her po­si­tion,” Mikel con­tin­ued. “I would like to in­clude Quinn in any fam­ily gath­er­ings that Made­moi­selle Fontaine is part of. It will be nat­u­ral, given Quinn’s re­la­tion­ship with Don Gabriel,” Mikel said. “Quinn will be my eyes and ears.”

Quinn sat bolt up­right. Her boss hadn’t men­tioned this as­pect of his plan.

The king’s gaze shifted to her, and she forced her­self not to squirm.

“You will in­form Gabriel of your pro­fes­sional role at the gath­er­ings,” Luis com­manded.

“Ab­so­lutely,” Quinn said, de­spite feel­ing queasy about once again blur­ring the lines be­tween work and per­sonal life.

The king turned back to Mikel. “Even if she’s guilty, I can’t imag­ine what Odette could do to hurt any­one here in Cal­eva. How­ever, I ex­pect a high level of se­cu­rity around my fam­ily at all times while she is in this coun­try.”

“No harm will come to your fam­ily.” Mikel spoke it like an oath.

“And no word of your sus­pi­cions will be breathed out­side this room, ex­cept to Raul and Gabriel,” Luis added.

“You do not want la Duquesa de Bruma in­formed?” Mikel asked, mak­ing it clear he did not agree.

Luis shook his head. “De­spite our dis­tant his­tory, Odette is a val­ued busi­ness part­ner and a close friend of Hélène’s. I do not want a shadow cast over ei­ther of those re­la­tion­ships un­til we are cer­tain there should be one.”

“Of course, Señor,” Mikel agreed.

The king glanced at the gold watch on his wrist and stood. “I have an­other ap­point­ment for which I am al­ready late. Get a meet­ing with Raul on my sched­ule so we can dis­cuss the false sap re­duc­tion num­bers.”

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