Page 61 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Quinn dipped a curtsy. As she rose, Raul caught her eye and nod­ded, his ex­pres­sion en­cour­ag­ing.

Then Gabriel was tow­ing her through a dif­fer­ent door out into the hall­way be­fore he stopped. “I hope you don’t mind, but I couldn’t bear an­other minute of my fa­ther’s bull­shit.”

“He was a lit­tle stiff, but he was mak­ing an ef­fort to talk with me about my work,” Quinn pointed out. “He looked very happy when you asked him about the doc­u­ments.”

“You heard his crack about me fi­nally tak­ing up my du­ties.”

“I think you’re in­ter­pret­ing it wrong. He was proud of you, not rep­ri­mand­ing you.”

“Un­til I men­tioned my mu­sic. He could hardly speak be­cause he was so pissed off.” Gabriel took a breath and scraped his fin­gers through his hair. “Sorry. He and I don’t get along well.”

Quinn had not heard anger in Don Lorenzo’s voice, but she gri­maced in sym­pa­thy. “Dads can be dif­fi­cult.”

“You have is­sues with your fa­ther?” Gabriel asked.

“Who doesn’t?” She needed to be more care­ful. She had for­got­ten that Gabriel didn’t know about her fam­ily his­tory, and she didn’t want him to. “Raul and his fa­ther must have a com­pli­cated re­la­tion­ship.”

“They butt heads some­times, but Tío Luis sup­ports Raul’s de­ci­sions as long as they are well thought out. He has al­ways sup­ported mine too.” The cor­ners of Gabriel’s mouth pulled into a faint, sad smile. “Strange to have a king be more fa­therly than your own par­ent.”

It seemed that Gabriel’s Tío Luis and Un­cle Pete filled the same roles in their re­spec­tive lives. Quinn coughed to cover up her in­vol­un­tary laugh. Un­cle Pete would revel in that com­par­i­son.

“Your fa­ther prob­a­bly isn’t good at ex­press­ing his feel­ings,” she said.

Anger re­placed the sad­ness on Gabriel’s face. “Oh, he’s quite ef­fec­tive at ex­press­ing how he feels.” He shook his head with a forced smile. “Let’s not ruin your sur­prise visit by talk­ing fam­ily. I apol­o­gize for not be­ing in touch with you af­ter the trip to Lis­bon, but I got pulled into this lily field busi­ness to help out my un­cle. Since pol­i­tics is not my strong suit, I’ve needed to study up.”

“And you started prac­tic­ing your gui­tar.”

“And that. I am go­ing to get that sec­ond opin­ion you rec­om­mended. Very soon.” Gabriel agreed be­fore he gen­tly squeezed her hand, the care­fully muted strength in his fin­gers send­ing a thrill through her. “Would you like a tour of the pri­vate wing of the palace?”

It was time to do her duty to Raul. “What I would re­ally love is to hear you play the gui­tar.”

She braced her­self for his re­fusal. His fin­gers tight­ened around hers for a mo­ment be­fore they re­laxed again. He held up his left hand, the abraded fin­ger­tips mak­ing her hiss in a pained breath. Raul had not ex­ag­ger­ated.

“Do they hurt a lot?” she asked.

“It’s the price of progress,” Gabriel said. “But they need to be cal­loused be­fore I’m ready to play for an au­di­ence.”

“I’m so far from a fla­menco afi­cionado that I won’t know the dif­fer­ence.”

“Since you in­spired me to be­gin again…” He shrugged. “Come with me to the tower room.”

She winced in­wardly at his claim that she was the rea­son for his wounded fin­gers and, even worse, for his re­newed hope. What the hell had she been think­ing?

As they walked along the hall­way, he pointed out the oc­ca­sional no­table art­work or an­tique fur­nish­ing. “It’s good to have a new vis­i­tor,” he mused. “I for­get to look at these ex­tra­or­di­nary pieces. They be­come wall­pa­per.”

“It’s hard to grasp that this is your home,” Quinn said, gog­gling at an or­nate sev­en­teenth-cen­tury suit of ar­mor.

“I live here, but it be­longs to Cal­eva.”

“You may be only a ten­ant, but at least you’re a long-term one.” She’d never spent more than a year in one lo­ca­tion.

“I re­mem­ber that you’ve moved of­ten.”

Plea­sure washed through her be­cause he re­called their con­ver­sa­tion. “It keeps your clos­ets cleaned out,” she said.

“There’s some­thing to be said for that. My other home—Bencalor—has at­tics stuffed with cen­turies of ac­cu­mu­lated junk.” He made a wry face. “It can weigh you down.”

“Not to men­tion that once junk reaches a cer­tain age, it be­comes his­tor­i­cal, so then you feel guilty about throw­ing it out.”

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