Page 50 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Touché!” Raul said, fall­ing back. “Good at­tack.”

They joined bat­tle, and Gabriel won three more points.

“Dios! You’re fight­ing like a crazy man,” Raul gasped, his chest heav­ing.

Gabriel smiled to him­self and dropped into en garde. There was Ko­dra again, re­fus­ing to speak to him, tak­ing him to the sur­geon for mu­ti­la­tion, strip­ping him of the hos­pi­tal gown he’d begged to keep.

Gabriel lunged and drove his foil to­ward Raul’s breast­bone, hit­ting it so hard that the foil bent in a high arch.

“Touché! Ouch!” Raul said, dodg­ing back­ward and mas­sag­ing his chest. “Match to you, loco.” He pulled off his mask and dropped it on the floor so Gabriel could see his cousin’s sweat-soaked hair plas­tered to his skull.

“Sorry, primo. I didn’t mean to come in that hard, but you’re so fast, I had no choice.” Gabriel lifted his foil in a salute to his cousin. He ripped off his mask and yanked the hem of his T-shirt up to wipe the sweat off his face as he sucked oxy­gen into his la­bor­ing lungs.

“Bravo!” It was the king’s voice, along with the sound of clap­ping.

Gabriel jerked his T-shirt back down to find his un­cle and Mikel stand­ing in the door­way. The king was ap­plaud­ing.

“Ex­cel­lent match,” Luis said as he strolled into the room. “Some­what un­ortho­dox but im­pres­sive. Raul, you need to work on your ri­poste. Gabriel, you took too many risks with your at­tacks. A cool head is key.” The king cocked an eye­brow at them. “Would ei­ther of you care to chal­lenge me to a match?”

Gabriel and Raul looked at each other. Gabriel was sure that his face mir­rored Raul’s ex­pres­sion of panic. They were both ex­hausted, and his un­cle fenced with a con­trolled fe­roc­ity that Gabriel couldn’t match at the best of times.

Luis laughed.

“Maybe Mikel would cross foils with you,” Raul sug­gested.

“My re­grets, Your High­ness, but a fight that has rules is not my style,” Mikel said with an ironic lit­tle bow. “I pre­fer guns.”

Gabriel looked at his slen­der fenc­ing foil. “That would be a short bout.”

“Ex­actly,” Mikel said, his face im­pas­sive.

That gave him a short glimpse into Mikel’s world. Gabriel had been forced into it once, but Mikel lived there. Gabriel shud­dered, blam­ing it on the dry­ing sweat that sud­denly chilled him.

When he looked back at his un­cle, he was sur­prised by the dis­ap­point­ment that had doused the light of an­tic­i­pa­tion in Luis’s eyes. “Guns have their uses, but they lack el­e­gance,” the king said be­fore he piv­oted to Gabriel. “I un­der­stand you are go­ing to New York in a few weeks.”

Gabriel had to reg­is­ter any travel plans with the royal house­hold for a whole va­ri­ety of rea­sons, in­clud­ing se­cu­rity. How­ever, he didn’t have to share his rea­sons. “Yes.”

Luis tilted his head to­ward the open gui­tar case on the floor. “You’re play­ing again?”

“I am.” Gabriel care­fully rested the tip of his foil on the floor.

“Good.” Luis turned to­ward his son. “Raul, will you join me in my of­fice, please? We need to dis­cuss the re­newal of the mil­i­tary base con­tract with the Amer­i­cans.”

“Of course.” Raul thrust his bare feet into his loafers and tossed his foil to Gabriel. “Re­match to­mor­row.”

“You’re a glut­ton for pun­ish­ment,” Gabriel taunted.

“In more ways than one,” the king said in a dry tone. “Gabriel, I un­der­stand you are meet­ing with Fran­cisco to­mor­row for your brief­ing on the lily del­e­ga­tion.”

“Yes, Señor,” Gabriel said. Now that he had started prac­tic­ing again, he be­grudged ev­ery mo­ment he didn’t spend with his gui­tar. How­ever, he would honor his obli­ga­tion to do what­ever was needed to han­dle the greedy no­bles.

Raul gave him a thumbs-up be­fore he turned to fol­low his fa­ther out of the room.

Gabriel bent to lay the foils on the floor.

“What made you go back to your gui­tar?”

Gabriel straight­ened to find Mikel still in the door­way. “A feel­ing.”

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