Page 60 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Gra­cias,” Quinn mur­mured as Gabriel seated him­self be­side her. Now she had to fig­ure out how to speak with him in pri­vate.

“The cake is al­most as good as Marta’s French toast,” he said, a se­duc­tively in­ti­mate hint of laugh­ter in his voice as he men­tioned the shared mem­ory.

“Noth­ing could be that good,” Quinn said, pick­ing up her fork and cut­ting off a small bite. She didn’t think she’d be able to en­joy the dessert with both Don Lorenzo and Gabriel watch­ing her, but the fla­vor was in­cred­i­ble—sweet, creamy, but with a light­ness to the cake that was ex­tra­or­di­nary, given all the milk that sat­u­rated it. “This is amaz­ing.” She poked at a deep pur­ple flower with the tine of her fork. “It’s al­most too pretty to eat, though.”

Gabriel nod­ded at his own plate, which was empty of all but flow­ers and a small swirl of the creamy sauce. “If you leave even a bite, Marta will hunt me down and ask what was wrong with it. Or with you.” Gabriel winked.

A lit­tle of Quinn’s ner­vous­ness eased. She cut off a larger bite. “I don’t want to sub­ject you to that.”

“I pre­fer the crema de Cal­eva,” Don Lorenzo said. “It’s our own na­tive tra­di­tion.”

Quinn had tasted it and thought it wasn’t much dif­fer­ent from crème brûlée, but she wasn’t go­ing to ar­gue with Gabriel’s fa­ther, es­pe­cially when Gabriel’s ex­pres­sion went from play­ful to ex­as­per­ated.

“Quinn, how did you like train­ing with Esmé?” Raul’s ques­tion came from di­ag­o­nally across the ta­ble. “She’s pretty tough.”

“My arm mus­cles are still com­plain­ing,” Quinn said. “And now Mikel has signed me up for a self-de­fense course, which he guar­an­tees will give me bruises. I’m sup­posed to be a com­puter nerd, not a ninja.”

Raul laughed.

Gabriel did not. In­stead, he spoke in a low voice. “Is Mikel con­cerned that you’re in dan­ger be­cause of your work on the kid­nap­ping?”

He never re­ferred to it as my kid­nap­ping.

“Not specif­i­cally, no.” Gabriel didn’t need to know that the kid­nap­ping was all she worked on. “You know Mikel. He’s pro­fes­sion­ally para­noid. It’s his job.”

“I sup­pose.” Gabriel did not sound sat­is­fied.

“So you’re a com­puter ex­pert?” Don Lorenzo asked Quinn.

“I’m more of an ex­pert at search­ing for in­for­ma­tion via com­puter. I’m not a com­puter sci­en­tist or any­thing like that,” Quinn an­swered, try­ing to gauge whether he was be­ing po­lite or was in­ter­ested.

“We are in the midst of scan­ning his­tor­i­cal Cal­e­van doc­u­ments into the com­puter so they will re­side in the cloud,” Don Lorenzo said, enun­ci­at­ing the tech­ni­cal terms care­fully, as though he were speak­ing an un­fa­mil­iar lan­guage. “I sup­pose that would be use­ful to some­one like you.”

“If it were in­dexed thor­oughly, it would be,” Quinn agreed.

Don Lorenzo shook his head. “I un­der­stand that is nec­es­sary, but you don’t have the sense of his­tory or dis­cov­ery if you find it in an in­dex. It is a shame to take that ex­pe­ri­ence away.”

“I un­der­stand what you mean. I get a thrill when I find a use­ful bit of in­for­ma­tion in my elec­tronic search­ing.”

“Ah, but my method is very dif­fer­ent from yours,” he said with a faint smile. “I rum­mage through dust-cov­ered wooden chests and climb to the high­est un­touched book­shelves of an­cient li­braries. It is a trea­sure hunt.”

On her right, Gabriel snorted. She con­sid­ered kick­ing his an­kle but de­cided you didn’t do that to a duke at the king’s din­ner ta­ble. Then he sur­prised her by lean­ing for­ward slightly so he could ad­dress his fa­ther. “Have you dis­cov­ered any new doc­u­ments in the last cou­ple of months that might re­late to own­er­ship of the lily fields?”

A look of sur­prised plea­sure flit­ted across Don Lorenzo’s face. “I don’t re­call any of sig­nif­i­cance, but I will con­sult my records to be sure. Why do you ask?”

“I’m help­ing Un­cle Luis and Raul with a po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion that in­volves the lily fields. There’s some vague claim that a new doc­u­ment has been found to shed doubt on the crown’s con­tract.”

His fa­ther’s eyes blazed with pride. “I am pleased to hear that you are tak­ing up your du­ties as a royal duke.”

Gabriel’s breath hissed in, and Quinn looked around to find his lips curled in a de­ri­sive smile. “I’m just the front man to keep some an­noy­ing no­bles from both­er­ing any­one im­por­tant. Not to men­tion that I’m play­ing the gui­tar again, so I won’t have much time for other du­ties.”

“You’re play­ing again?” Don Lorenzo sounded as though he could barely get the words out. Was he re­lieved or con­cerned? Quinn couldn’t tell. “Hijo mío, I am—”

“I’m sorry to end this de­light­ful evening, but I must re­tire,” la mar­quise's crys­talline voice cut through all con­ver­sa­tion.

The ta­ble rose as one, ex­cept for Quinn, who was un­pre­pared and scram­bled to her feet a few sec­onds late. The king and la mar­quise ex­changed the stan­dard dou­ble-cheek air-kiss, and Camille fol­lowed her god­mother from the din­ing room.

“Let’s get out of here,” Gabriel whis­pered in her ear as he seized her hand. “Fa­ther, please ex­cuse us.” He led her to the king. “Tío, it was a plea­sure.”

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