Page 97 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

And then she al­most said shit again, be­cause the king walked into the foyer. He was dressed much like Gabriel, ex­cept his tai­lored trousers were navy, and his per­fectly fit­ted shirt was pale blue. The col­ors high­lighted the gleam­ing sil­ver in his salt-and-pep­per hair and trim beard and made the ice blue of his eyes more vivid. His height and lean, el­e­gant build made him all the more re­gal and in­tim­i­dat­ing.

“Hélène!” he said, kiss­ing the duchess on both cheeks. “Such a great plea­sure to have you here.”

The mo­ment Quinn had been dread­ing came as the king turned to her. “Quinn, we are so glad you could join us for din­ner tonight.”

As though she’d had any choice about it. She curt­sied the way she’d prac­ticed in front of her mir­ror. “It is an honor, Su Ma­jes­tad.”

As she rose from her obei­sance, the king took her right hand. “Such for­mal­ity is not nec­es­sary,” he said with a smile be­fore he bent to give her one of those damned dou­ble air-kisses.

She didn’t hes­i­tate to go left first, as per Gabriel’s in­struc­tions. How­ever, she had no idea what to say af­ter that. For­tu­nately, Luis turned to greet Gabriel.

Next, they pro­ceeded into a com­fort­able sit­ting room where Raul, Gabriel’s fa­ther, and a young woman sat with drinks in their hands. Gabriel had told Quinn that they had in­vited a dis­tant cousin, Fer­nanda, la Con­desa de Santa Cruz, to add an­other young per­son to the mix.

Quinn re­laxed as greet­ings and in­tro­duc­tions took place. She would never get used to be­ing around the king, but she’d run the gamut of the rest of these peo­ple be­fore—ex­cept for Fer­nanda, who was young enough not to worry her—and she had sur­vived. The sec­ond time around was, in fact, eas­ier, much to her as­ton­ish­ment.

“Shall we go in to din­ner?” Hélène asked, tak­ing on the role of host­ess. The duchess shep­herded ev­ery­one into the same din­ing room Quinn had vis­ited the last time she’d seen the royal fam­ily as­sem­bled.

Back then, she’d got­ten a con­fused im­pres­sion of a pol­ished oval ta­ble with large sil­ver can­de­labra flick­er­ing on it. Now she saw that the walls were cov­ered in pale green silk and hung with sunny land­scapes. A large Aubus­son rug picked up the same green for its back­ground. The ta­ble was set with sparkling crys­tal, china, and sil­ver. So this was what a ca­sual fam­ily din­ner looked like in a palace. Not ex­actly low-key.

“Quinn…” Hélène be­gan as peo­ple ap­proached the ta­ble.

The king pulled out the chair to the right of his po­si­tion at the head of the ta­ble and ges­tured to­ward Quinn. “Please sit be­side me.”

Shit! Gabriel had promised that his mother would seat Quinn far away from the king. That way, Quinn might pos­si­bly en­joy her food.

She called on all the lessons her fa­ther had taught her about how to fake sin­cer­ity and smiled at Luis as she slid into the chair. “Muchas gra­cias.”

How many peo­ple could say that a king had held their chair af­ter all?

Hélène ar­ranged the rest of the ta­ble so she sat op­po­site Quinn, Gabriel was next to Quinn, and Fer­nanda was next to Gabriel. Gabriel’s fa­ther sat be­side his wife, while Raul took the last seat on that side.

Quinn re­signed her­self to in­di­ges­tion.

The king said a brief prayer of thanks be­fore he nod­ded to the server stand­ing by a door in the cor­ner of the room. The door swung open, and a pa­rade of servers clad in black trousers, white shirts, and Cal­e­van green ties en­tered and placed shal­low dishes of a creamy soup and a small crys­tal dish of hexag­o­nal crack­ers in front of each diner.

“Clam chow­der,” the head server an­nounced be­fore she dis­ap­peared be­hind the door.

The king picked up his soup spoon, set­ting off a flurry of clink­ing as ev­ery­one else fol­lowed suit.

“Quinn, it’s a plea­sure to have you with us again,” Luis said, a po­lite half smile barely soft­en­ing the com­mand­ing an­gles of his face. “Since you are a rel­a­tive new­comer to our coun­try, I am in­ter­ested to hear your opin­ion of it.”

Quinn nearly dropped her spoon. At least she hadn’t yet taken a mouth­ful of soup. “I’ll state the ob­vi­ous and say that it’s stun­ningly beau­ti­ful.” Too bland and im­per­sonal. “I’ve en­joyed fur­nish­ing my house with all the gor­geous fur­ni­ture and dec­o­ra­tive hand­crafts that the Cal­e­van ar­ti­sans cre­ate. You have such a vi­brant arts com­mu­nity. I didn’t re­al­ize that be­fore I moved here.”

Luis lifted an eye­brow. “Did Gabriel bribe you to say that? He wants to make it more vi­brant still.”

Was the pro­posed fes­ti­val con­sid­ered work and there­fore off-lim­its for fam­ily din­ing? Well, the king had brought it up. “I’m ex­cited about his plans for the mu­sic fes­ti­val, for en­tirely self­ish rea­sons. There are at least four per­form­ers that I’d sell my soul to see,” she said.

“A mu­sic fes­ti­val! What a great idea!” Fer­nanda leaned for­ward, her dark eyes wide. “I want to help pick the bands. Gabriel will prob­a­bly have too much clas­si­cal stuff.”

“Hey!” Gabriel ob­jected be­fore he turned to Quinn. “Tell her who I al­ready have on the list.”

Quinn reeled off the names of half a dozen pop­u­lar, in­ter­na­tion­ally known per­form­ers.

“Of course, there’s no guar­an­tee that they’ll ac­cept the in­vi­ta­tion,” Gabriel said.

“Don’t be so mod­est, her­mano,” Raul said, loung­ing back in his chair. “You have the mu­si­cal chops, and Cal­eva has the beauty, as Quinn pointed out. You’ll be beat­ing them off with a stick.”

“Par­don,” Hélène in­ter­jected. “But what mu­sic fes­ti­val are we talk­ing about? I know I have been away, but I feel like I would have heard about such an event.”

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