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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.”
