Page 139 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Gabriel slashed his fin­gers across the strings on the last note and stopped. He could feel his sweat-soaked shirt cling­ing to his back. Locks of hair were plas­tered to his face, and he blinked the sting­ing, salty wa­ter out of his eyes.

For a long mo­ment, he kept his head bent over the gui­tar. He’d poured ev­ery­thing he had into the three pieces he’d played, but had it been enough?

Find­ing courage in some dis­tant cor­ner of his soul, he lifted his gaze to Marisela. She sat up­right on the sim­ple black chair, one hand stroking down her long braid.

“What was that third piece you played?” she asked. “I didn’t rec­og­nize it.”

“Some­thing I wrote.” About three months af­ter his kid­nap­ping. He’d taken a chance play­ing it for her, but the com­bi­na­tion of anger and de­spair had spo­ken to him in his cur­rent mood.

“It’s good, re­ally good.” She gave him a mea­sur­ing look. “Maybe we could work out a deal for me to get lim­ited per­for­mance rights to it.”

“Maybe.” He drummed his fin­gers lightly on his gui­tar in a ques­tion.

“What do you want me to say?” Marisela spread her arms and hands.

“The truth.” Gabriel had to stop his knee from jig­gling ner­vously.

“I lis­tened to your old record­ings last night. You need a shit­load of prac­tice to get back to where you were be­fore.” She pro­ceeded to rip his tech­nique to shreds in great de­tail.

Strangely, none of her crit­i­cisms both­ered him. He knew it all al­ready, so he waved it aside with a sharp ges­ture. “I can get the tech­nique back. But can I get back…the ear?”

Marisela just looked at him. “I don’t know what ear you’re talk­ing about. You hear fine.”

Gabriel blew out an ex­as­per­ated breath. “Can I be good again? Maybe great?”

“You shouldn’t be ask­ing me that. You should be ask­ing your­self.”

“I have. I don’t know the an­swer.”

“Then you can’t be great.”

Pain knifed through Gabriel, mak­ing it hard to draw air into his lungs. This was what he’d feared. He slumped over his gui­tar, his hands dan­gling. “An­to­nio was right. He told me I had lost it.”

She flicked her fin­gers in a dis­mis­sive way. “An­to­nio be­lieves tech­ni­cal per­fec­tion is ev­ery­thing, but that’s just his style.”

“Don’t you seek tech­ni­cal per­fec­tion?”

“Dios mío, no!” Hor­ror widened her eyes. “Tech­nique should al­ways be in ser­vice to the mu­sic.” She shrugged. “If you want me to tell you what your style is, it’s dif­fer­ent than be­fore. There’s an edge to it, a raw­ness. It’s a lit­tle an­gry and dan­ger­ous. I like it.”

“But you told me I can’t be great.”

“Look, you’ve got plenty of tal­ent, but I’ve known a lot of tal­ented gui­tarists who will never be great. They are not will­ing to aim for it.” She braced her hands on her thighs and leaned to­ward him. “So aim for it, amigo mío. Fo­cus ev­ery­thing you have in you on be­com­ing great.”

Then she sat back on her chair so that it creaked slightly.

“A word of warn­ing, though. You will never reach your goal. If you think you have, then your ca­reer is over. You might as well quit.”

Con­fu­sion clouded his brain. “But you’re at the top of your game. You’re con­sid­ered one of the best fla­menco gui­tarists in the world.”

“All I hear when I play is how much bet­ter I need to be, how far I have to go to make the mu­sic sound like what I hear in here.” She made a fist and touched it to her fore­head.

“Yes!” He felt that way too. The mu­sic never sounded the way it did in his mind’s ear.

“Good, you un­der­stand.”

“But—” Had she given him an an­swer?

She held up a hand to si­lence him be­fore she reached over to grab the case that held the Tor­res. Pulling it over by her feet, she lifted out the beau­ti­ful in­stru­ment, its pol­ished wood flash­ing in the spot­lights. “Ah, mi amor,” she crooned as she crossed her legs and cra­dled it on her thighs to tune it.

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