Page 53 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

The king’s ad­viser nod­ded and ex­ited through a dif­fer­ent door.

“What fur­ther in­for­ma­tion do you have for me?” Gabriel asked, con­tin­u­ing to stand.

“I am cu­ri­ous about your po­lit­i­cal plans. Per­haps you in­tend to run for a seat on the Con­sejo de los Señores?” Riva asked.

Quinn had asked him the same ques­tion. His re­ac­tion to­day was more muted but still neg­a­tive. How­ever, el mar­qués didn’t need to know that. “It is a con­sid­er­a­tion.”

Anger flashed in Riva’s eyes be­fore he spoke again. “I am sure the king would be pleased to have you there. Per­haps even as Por­tavoz del Con­sejo.”

“I would not as­pire to such an ex­alted po­si­tion un­til I had much more ex­pe­ri­ence,” Gabriel said. The por­tavoz was the head of the con­sejo and wielded tremen­dous power.

“Ex­pe­ri­ence is not the only re­quire­ment,” Riva said, his pos­ture re­lax­ing a frac­tion. “But a pas­sion for the work is.”

“And you have that pas­sion?”

“It would be an honor to lead my fel­low señores,” Riva said.

Riva had ma­jor po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions, and he didn’t want Gabriel get­ting in his way. Had he joined the Lily Ca­bal be­cause he be­lieved in the cause, or be­cause he had struck a bar­gain for their sup­port of his pur­suit of be­ing por­tavoz?

“I wish you luck in your can­di­dacy,” Gabriel said in a neu­tral tone.

“Muchas gra­cias.” Frus­tra­tion at Gabriel’s nonan­swer tight­ened Riva’s mouth. “I will take no more of your time.” With an­other nearly in­so­lent half bow, he turned on his heel and stalked back into the Salón del Dragón.

Gabriel shook his head in dis­be­lief. Riva couldn’t be that good a politi­cian if he failed to gauge Gabriel’s lack of in­ter­est in be­ing por­tavoz. On the other hand, his un­cle should be warned of the pos­si­bil­ity of hav­ing the Lily Ca­bal wield that kind of in­flu­ence.

He blew out a long breath be­fore he walked down the cor­ri­dor to his un­cle’s pri­vate of­fice. The door was open, so he stuck his head in.

The king sat be­hind his mas­sive carved desk, while Raul sprawled in a tan leather chair as both lis­tened to a call on speak­er­phone. His un­cle glanced over and waved Gabriel to the chair next to Raul’s. His cousin rolled his eyes and opened and closed one hand in a way that said the speaker was bor­ing and long-winded.

How strange it was to both envy and pity Raul. His cousin’s fu­ture was mapped out for him from birth, so he didn’t strug­gle to find his place in the world. But he also had no choice about what road he walked. Thank God Raul en­joyed all this crap.

The voice on the phone fell silent for a split sec­ond, and Luis said, “Gra­cias, señor. I’m afraid I have an ap­point­ment now, so I will con­sider your con­cern care­fully and let you know what can be done. Un saludo.” He hit the dis­con­nect but­ton.

“Man, am I glad you showed up,” Raul said to Gabriel.

“Señor Lopez is a long-stand­ing and val­ued ally, hijo,” the king said with a sharp look. “We need to lis­ten to him.”

“But not for twenty min­utes of whin­ing about how much bet­ter it was in the old days,” Raul mut­tered.

Luis turned to Gabriel. “How did it go with the lily grub­bers?”

Gabriel choked on a laugh at the king’s de­scrip­tion of the del­e­ga­tion. “They of­fered spread­sheets show­ing how much more prof­itably they would run the fields. They ques­tioned the le­gal­ity of the crown tak­ing own­er­ship of the fields. They ex­cluded any rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the ré­gion française. All of that we ex­pected. The two things that con­cerned me were their claim that more and more of the newly elected rep­re­sen­tantes in the Con­sejo de los Ciu­dadanos sup­port re­turn­ing the lily fields to the orig­i­nal own­ers and that el Mar­qués de Riva as­pires to be Por­tavoz del Con­sejo de los Señores.”

Raul straight­ened in his chair, his at­ten­tion laser-fo­cused. “We’ve been notic­ing the un­usu­ally high turnover in seats in the lower house in the last cou­ple of years. A lot of in­cum­bents have been ousted. And the chal­lengers have run sur­pris­ingly well-funded cam­paigns.”

The king nod­ded.

“I can’t help won­der­ing what the Lily Ca­bal has promised the rep­re­sen­tantes in ex­change for their sup­port,” Gabriel said.

“That is a very good ques­tion,” Luis said.

“One we need an­swers to,” Raul said, his eyes nar­rowed in thought. “I have a few sources I can work through. Fran­cisco prob­a­bly has some ideas too.”

Raul’s face was lit with the kind of in­ten­sity that Gabriel re­mem­bered from the soc­cer field and the de­bate team, both of which his cousin had ex­celled at.

Gabriel didn’t think he would ever feel that kind of ex­cite­ment about meet­ing with a group of politi­cians, whether greedy or ide­al­is­tic.

Raul turned to his fa­ther. “You don’t think Tante Odette would be in league with the ca­bal, do you? We’ve done so much for her, but she al­ways wants a greater share of lily sap.”

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