Page 155 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

When ev­ery­one had a drink in hand, Luis spoke from his wing chair. “Gabriel, may I re­quest that you play for us? I would like to hear this piece that Ms. Alejo is so ex­cited about.”

Quinn ex­pected to feel Gabriel stiffen be­side her, but he nod­ded with­out hes­i­ta­tion. “I would be hon­ored, Tío.”

“What piece is that?” Odette asked.

“Gabriel com­posed an orig­i­nal work, which he played for Ms. Alejo in New York.” Pride rang in Hélène’s voice. “She wishes to in­clude it in her own per­for­mances.”

“Im­pres­sive,” Odette said with lifted eye­brows.

“Perdón.” Gabriel gave Quinn a peck on the cheek be­fore he set down his glass of brandy and stood.

When he walked to­ward the cor­ner of the room, Quinn was sur­prised to see his gui­tar case al­ready there. Some­one had known that Luis would ask him to play.

Gabriel car­ried the case to an arm­less wooden chair near the fire­place. The room went quiet as he placed the case flat on the floor. He looked up, smil­ing. “Go ahead and talk. I need to make sure my gui­tar is tuned.”

Quinn tried to keep her fo­cus on Odette but found it im­pos­si­ble when Gabriel was in­tent on tun­ing his gui­tar, his dark hair fram­ing the clean an­gles of his jaw and cheek­bones, his long fin­gers pluck­ing the strings and twist­ing the tun­ing pegs. He touched the in­stru­ment the way he had touched her body, with care and con­fi­dence. Heat shim­mered through her.

He struck a loud chord, and con­ver­sa­tion died again. “This is the piece Marisela wishes to play,” he said. “It has no ti­tle. It is sim­ply emo­tion.”

His gaze turned in­ward as he be­gan the pro­gres­sion of notes. He had poured all the de­spair and anger he’d felt about his kid­nap­ping into the mu­sic. It was hard for Quinn to lis­ten with­out want­ing to wrap her arms around him and soothe his pain.

She glanced around the room to see ev­ery­one rapt, even Odette, al­though her face was un­read­able. Hélène had tears stand­ing in her eyes, while Luis’s and Lorenzo’s jaws were tight in ex­actly the same way. Raul’s hands squeezed into fists on the arms of his chair. They all knew where this mu­sic had come from and felt Gabriel’s an­guish.

Gabriel hit the last qua­ver­ing note of tor­ment and raised his head while his lis­ten­ers sat silent, still trapped in the vor­tex of sound and feel­ing.

“That was ex­tra­or­di­nary,” Luis said, clap­ping his hands. “I un­der­stand why Ms. Alejo wants to per­form it.”

The oth­ers joined the ap­plause as Gabriel bowed from the chair in a brief ac­knowl­edg­ment. He held up a hand. “I would like to play an­other song, this one tra­di­tional fla­menco.”

“Sí, toca más!” Raul called out. “Play more!”

Gabriel be­gan with a flurry of notes in a mi­nor key be­fore he looked at Quinn and be­gan to sing in Span­ish. He had a lovely, smooth bari­tone, but he usu­ally pre­ferred to let his gui­tar speak for him, so she was star­tled. The song was slow, which gave her time to trans­late the lyrics as he sang.

At night, a man stood out­side the house of the woman he loved and watched her sit­ting in the lighted win­dow. She laughed and talked to some­one he couldn’t see, but he knew he was the man she had mar­ried in­stead of him. It was a tale of long­ing and un­re­quited love, and Gabriel sang it while in­ter­twin­ing his gaze with Quinn’s.

Ev­ery­thing in her yearned to­ward him. She thrust her hands un­der her thighs to keep from reach­ing out to com­fort him, to re­as­sure him that she loved him too. He was so sad, so bro­ken, so with­out hope. How could she leave him?

The last notes were a word­less howl of des­o­la­tion, and she nearly howled with them.

As the sound died away, she could hear the oth­ers in the room ex­hale as though they’d been hold­ing their breath the en­tire time.

Gabriel did not look away from her, his face set in stark lines that matched the song.

“Dios mío,” Raul said into the si­lence. “You’re break­ing my heart here. Can’t you play some­thing cheery?”

Gabriel turned to­ward his cousin, and Quinn slumped in re­lief. She felt hol­lowed out and mis­er­able. Was that how she had made Gabriel feel?

“A drink­ing song!” Gabriel said, pick­ing out a rol­lick­ing phrase. “Sing along, be­cause you all know this one.”

Quinn watched in as­ton­ish­ment as ev­ery­one else in the room—in­clud­ing the king—joined in on a bawdy story about get­ting drunk and be­ing turned down by a se­ries of women. Even Odette knew the words and clapped along in the right rhythm when Gabriel drummed his fin­gers against his gui­tar.

When it ended in a round of cheers, Gabriel laughed and turned to her. “I’ll have to teach you that one, car­iño mío. It’s a fam­ily fa­vorite.”

“So I see,” she said, still in shock at see­ing the king and Gabriel’s fa­ther belt­ing out the raunchy cho­rus.

Gabriel slipped the gui­tar strap over his head and laid the in­stru­ment in its case.

“Muchas gra­cias, hijo mío,” Luis said. “That was much needed.”

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