Page 31 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

She wanted to kneel at his feet and tell him how rare and pre­cious his bone-deep sense of duty was. There was no one in her life who would have done what Gabriel had done. Quite the op­po­site, in fact. How­ever, he wouldn’t un­der­stand her awe be­cause that in­tegrity was in­nate to him.

“Well, maybe you could look at the medal as a way to en­cour­age all the other Cal­e­vans in their duty to their prince. If they have to make a sac­ri­fice, they’ll get re­warded with a big shiny pin and a fancy cer­e­mony.”

He gri­maced and slumped back on the couch. “My un­cle said es­sen­tially the same thing.”

His un­cle? Right, that would be King Luis.

“Since your un­cle is the king, aren’t you sup­posed to be­lieve him with­out ques­tion?”

Gabriel gazed at the ceil­ing. “He’s the king, not the pope.”

She wasn’t sure if that was a joke, but she de­cided to go with it. “Are you sure your un­cle knows that?”

He looked shocked even as he laughed. “The palace still has dun­geons, you know.”

“I trust you not to be­tray me.” She was pleased that she’d made him laugh. “Let me get you some cof­fee.” Al­though he seemed less drunk than when he’d ar­rived.

He cir­cled his long fin­gers around her wrist and an­chored it to the couch, his touch send­ing a fris­son of aware­ness over her skin. “I can’t talk like this when I’m sober.”

Of course he couldn’t. At least not to her. The weight of his rank would pre­vent him from re­veal­ing the dark cor­ners of his soul to an Amer­i­can com­moner.

On the other hand, maybe that’s why he had come here tonight. She was like a bar­tender—she didn’t mat­ter in his world, so he could un­bur­den him­self with­out fear of reper­cus­sions.

With her, he could find the words he needed to de­fine what he was feel­ing. Once he had the emo­tions wrapped up in sen­tences, he would be able to han­dle them. If he left them swirling through him with­out def­i­ni­tion, he would never be in con­trol.

“Since you’re talk­ing, I have a ques­tion.” She tugged her wrist out of his grasp be­cause the warmth and strength of his grip dis­tracted her.

Wari­ness shut­tered his gray eyes.

“Why don’t you play the gui­tar any­more?” she asked.

She winced at the an­guish that twisted his mouth be­fore he turned his face away from her. “Be­cause I can’t.”

“You have all your fin­gers, so why not?” She knew he’d begged the kid­nap­pers not to cut off a fin­ger when they’d dragged him into the makeshift op­er­at­ing room. It had turned out they’d never planned to.

“It takes more than just a work­ing set of hands to play well.” He held up both his hands and splayed the long, ta­per­ing fin­gers in front of his face. “These are use­less if you can’t hear the mu­sic.”

“But you can still hear with both ears, can’t you?” She’d read that in the file. The sur­geon who had sliced off Gabriel’s outer ear for the kid­nap­pers had known what he was do­ing. He had left enough un­dam­aged skin to al­low for it to cover the frame­work of car­ti­lage taken from Gabriel’s ribs dur­ing the re­con­struc­tion process. The man had also left the chan­nel to the eardrum in­tact. Of course, that level of skill had also made it eas­ier to nar­row the field of can­di­dates in or­der to iden­tify the doc­tor. She smiled an evil lit­tle in­ter­nal smile.

Gabriel leaned for­ward, brac­ing his el­bows on his knees and drop­ping his head into his hands. Strands of his hair came loose from his pony­tail and trailed over his skin, mak­ing Quinn long to brush them back. No, she wanted to loosen all of his hair, plunge her hands into the dark silk of it, and pull his face to hers for a kiss. She wanted him to mur­mur against her lips so that his deep, sen­sual voice vi­brated in­side her like she was the gui­tar he no longer played.

“Yes. No.” He scrubbed his palms against his cheeks. “I hear dif­fer­ently.”

“Dif­fer­ently doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean worse, does it?” She’d read up on ear surgery as a way to pin­point the doc­tor who might have per­formed it. Ev­i­dently, the hu­man outer ear wasn’t es­pe­cially ef­fi­cient at col­lect­ing sound waves, es­pe­cially when com­pared with most an­i­mals’ ears. As long as his ear had been re­con­structed to the same shape and di­men­sions, his hear­ing shouldn’t have been af­fected in a sig­nif­i­cant way. Gabriel had got­ten lucky, too, when the kid­nap­pers had cho­sen to re­move his right ear, be­cause the left ear was the one most re­cep­tive to mu­sic.

He low­ered his hands and turned to glare at her. “It means worse when it comes to mu­sic. I’ve lost the abil­ity to hear the sub­tle res­o­nances of the gui­tar’s sound.”

“Are you sure? Be­cause maybe it’s a trick your brain is play­ing on you due to the trauma.”

“I’m sure.” But his glare faded.

“So you can’t play the gui­tar at all any­more?”

He made a jab­bing ges­ture of re­fusal. “I won’t play if I can’t do it at a high level. I want to be the best.”

Now they were get­ting some­where. “I un­der­stand that, but how do you know that you can’t play at that level again?”

“An ex­pert told me. My teacher and men­tor, An­to­nio de la Cueva, is one of the great­est fla­menco gui­tarists in the world. He tried to help me, but he says it is im­pos­si­ble now. I won’t be able to achieve the re­sults I wish for.”

---