Page 52 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Don Ar­turo, el Conde de Echevar­ria, pulled a print­out from the leather port­fo­lio rest­ing on the sofa be­side him. “I’ve de­tailed the eco­nomic ben­e­fits in these re­ports. In short, we would con­tinue to honor the Con­trato de los Lirios, but we would gen­er­ate more in­come by be­ing able to open up new mar­kets for the lily sap, both with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and cos­metic com­pa­nies. At the present time, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the lily sap goes to sci­en­tists at a very low price. Since no new break­throughs have been made in the last ten years, we feel it’s time to shift some of the sap ear­marked for sci­ence to more prof­itable ar­eas.”

Greedy bas­tards.

El conde stood to hand the re­port to Gabriel. “Gra­cias,” Gabriel mur­mured. “If you would email a copy of your re­port to Señor Var­gas as well, I would be grate­ful.”

“Then there is the mat­ter of the le­gal­ity of the crown’s own­er­ship of the lily fields,” Don Pe­dro in­ter­jected, since Gabriel clearly wasn’t im­pressed by the eco­nomic ar­gu­ments.

“The lily fields were ceded to the crown over fifty years ago.” Gabriel spread his hands in a ges­ture of noth­ing can be done about it. “If there were an is­sue of le­gal­ity, I think it would have sur­faced be­fore now.”

“Per­haps not,” Don Pe­dro said. “New doc­u­ments have come to light.”

“De ver­dad?” Gabriel raised his eye­brows in sur­prise. “As the na­tional his­to­rian, my fa­ther, el Duque de Bruma, is gen­er­ally aware of re­cent dis­cov­er­ies. He hasn’t men­tioned any­thing about a new find.” Might as well make his fa­ther use­ful in some way.

“I may have mis­spo­ken about new doc­u­ments,” el conde backpedaled. “It is a new in­ter­pre­ta­tion, ar­rived at through rig­or­ous le­gal schol­ar­ship.”

By lawyers the ca­bal had hired, no doubt.

“Fas­ci­nat­ing,” Gabriel said, ac­cept­ing Don Ar­turo’s prof­fered re­port. “I will read this with great at­ten­tion.” He could not quite keep the sar­casm out of his tone.

He turned to Ed­uardo with a ques­tion­ing look since ev­ery­one in the del­e­ga­tion seemed to have a de­fined role, but el mar­qués gave him a bland gaze in re­turn.

Don Pe­dro jumped back into the dis­cus­sion. “You have not been ac­tive in gov­ern­men­tal af­fairs in the last few years, so you may not be aware that there is grow­ing sup­port for this mat­ter not just in the Con­sejo de los Señores, but also in the Con­sejo de los Ciu­dadanos. There has been a new wave of rep­re­sen­ta­tives elected who be­lieve the ben­e­fits of the lilies should be less cen­trally con­trolled.”

That was bad news if it were true. It would take an un­likely su­per­ma­jor­ity in both con­se­jos to pass a res­o­lu­tion chal­leng­ing the crown’s own­er­ship of the lily fields, but it was the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble. Gabriel did not al­low his ex­pres­sion of po­lite in­ter­est to wa­ver. “I’m not clear on what ben­e­fit the Con­sejo de los Ciu­dadanos would per­ceive in re­turn­ing own­er­ship of the lily fields to a group of no­bles.”

At last, Ed­uardo en­tered the con­ver­sa­tion. “It opens up pos­si­bil­i­ties for ne­go­ti­a­tion.”

So they must have made a deal with some mem­bers of the lower con­sejo, giv­ing them a cut of the lily prof­its. A flare of anger licked through Gabriel’s veins. This kind of back­room fa­vor-trad­ing was why Luis’s fa­ther had taken the lily fields away from the no­bles. Even be­fore the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prop­er­ties of the lilies had been dis­cov­ered, el Rey Carlo had rec­og­nized that the lilies were a rare nat­u­ral re­source that needed to be pro­tected. He did not trust the no­bles to do so. Now, of course, the kind of money that could be made by ex­ploit­ing the lilies was enough to cor­rupt even a staunch en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist. Hence, the Con­trato de los Lirios, which kept the crown it­self hon­est and trans­par­ent.

“Di­vide and con­quer?” Gabriel asked, his voice hard.

“There might be new mar­kets for other parts of the lilies as well,” Ed­uardo said.

“I no­tice that you have no rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the ré­gion française here?” Gabriel made it a ques­tion.

“We have sup­port­ers among the French as well,” Don Pe­dro snapped.

Gabriel waited.

El Duque de Narro looked down his thin nose and spoke for the first time. “We felt it was prefer­able to keep this among those who care most deeply about Cal­eva.”

So the ex­clu­sion of the French mi­nor­ity was de­lib­er­ate, as they so of­ten com­plained. Gabriel sighed in­wardly. Of course, there was only one sig­nif­i­cant lily field in the ré­gion française, so their en­thu­si­asm for the Lily Ca­bal might be luke­warm at best.

Gabriel de­cided that he wasn’t go­ing to get any ad­di­tional use­ful in­for­ma­tion out of the group. He held up the sheaf of pa­pers he had col­lected. “Señores, I have a great deal to read and re­port on to el Rey Luis.” He stood, which forced the del­e­ga­tion to stand as well. “I ap­pre­ci­ate the time you have taken to present your pro­posal.”

Af­ter a flurry of cer­e­mo­nial farewells, Gabriel strode back into the an­techam­ber, clos­ing the door firmly be­hind him. He was sur­prised to find that he felt ex­hil­a­ra­tion mixed with the re­lief. The meet­ing had been like a fenc­ing match. The prob­lem was that no clear win­ner could be de­clared, at least for this par­tic­u­lar meet­ing.

Fran­cisco rose from the an­tique desk where he had been work­ing on a lap­top. “It went well?”

“I don’t think I em­bar­rassed the crown,” Gabriel said.

“It would not be pos­si­ble for you to do so,” Fran­cisco replied with solemn sin­cer­ity.

Gabriel re­pressed a snort of dis­be­lief and held up the re­ports. “My bed­time read­ing. They’re email­ing them to you as well.”

A knock sounded on the door to the salón. Fran­cisco raised his eye­brows as he opened it. El Mar­qués de Riva stepped through. “May I speak with you pri­vately, Don Gabriel?”

The meet­ing was over, but Gabriel was cu­ri­ous. “Please come in. Fran­cisco, would you ex­cuse us?”

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