Page 98 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Gabriel turned to his mother to ex­plain his pro­posal while Quinn heaved a sigh of re­lief to have the ta­ble’s at­ten­tion drawn away from her. She took a spoon­ful of the chow­der, the fresh clams with a touch of smoky ba­con de­light­ing her palate. Af­ter swal­low­ing, she glanced around to see if any­one else was en­joy­ing it as much as she was. Her breath snagged in her lungs when she found the king’s pale blue gaze rest­ing on her. As their eyes met, he gave an in­fin­i­tes­i­mal nod be­fore turn­ing to speak with the duchess.

How should she in­ter­pret that? She stared into her soup, try­ing to de­cide if that meant she had got­ten his seal of ap­proval, or if it meant that he wanted her to know he was keep­ing an eye on her. Prob­a­bly the lat­ter.

She felt Gabriel’s hand on her thigh, the wel­come warmth of his palm soak­ing through the thin fab­ric of her trousers to her skin. He bent his head near her ear. “You’re do­ing great, car­iño mío. And thanks for the en­dorse­ment of my mu­sic fest.” Amuse­ment vi­brated in his voice.

“It took the heat off me,” she mur­mured back.

“An ex­cel­lent strat­egy,” he agreed.

Quinn ate the last spoon­ful of chow­der, and her bowl was whisked away.

A few min­utes later, the pro­ces­sion of servers de­liv­ered filet mignon, roasted baby pota­toes crusted with Parme­san, green beans aman­dine, and bas­kets of bread still warm from the oven. The but­ter pats were round and im­printed with the royal Cal­e­van dragon. Quinn was sur­prised by the menu since she had ex­pected dishes with a more lo­cal fla­vor.

Then it dawned on her that Luis could eat any­thing he darned well pleased in the pri­vacy of his palace. He was the king af­ter all.

Of course, ev­ery morsel on her plate was per­fec­tion. The filet needed no knife to cut it and was in­fused with sub­tle spices she couldn’t be­gin to iden­tify. The pota­toes made her close her eyes in ap­pre­ci­a­tion of their tex­ture and cheesy lus­cious­ness. The bright green beans tasted like gar­lic and sun­shine. When she bit into a slice of bread, she could tell the but­ter had been freshly churned, while the bread held a hint of sweet­ness in its chewy tex­ture.

“I hear you’re au­dit­ing a course with la Pro­fe­sora Or­tiz,” Raul said to her. “She was one of my fa­vorites at uni­ver­sity. She’s tough on grad­ing, though.”

“Her lec­tures are more like fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries. I get so caught up in them, it’s hard to re­mem­ber to take notes,” Quinn said. “Not to men­tion, I don’t have to worry about grades since I’m just an au­di­tor.” She oc­ca­sion­ally got tempted by the top­ics the pro­fes­sor pro­posed for pa­pers. Af­ter all, re­search was her thing. It would be nice to ap­ply it to some­thing other than crim­i­nals.

“You’re study­ing with Laeti­tia Or­tiz?” Gabriel’s fa­ther asked. “She’s one of our fore­most schol­ars. Which pe­riod of Cal­e­van his­tory are you fo­cus­ing on?”

Quinn put down her fork with a clat­ter as she cast a ner­vous glance at the king. “I’m in the sec­ond half of the sur­vey course, so we’re learn­ing about the nine­teenth cen­tury.”

“That time pe­riod is not as col­or­ful as the ear­lier cen­turies,” Lorenzo said with a lifted brow. “Are you still en­joy­ing it?”

She forced a smile. “I’ll ad­mit that the swash­buck­lers and pi­rates of the early days were fun, but it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to fol­low the evo­lu­tion of the monar­chy and other gov­ern­men­tal in­sti­tu­tions as they move into mod­ern times.”

It was also in­ter­est­ing to hear that Pro­fes­sor Or­tiz con­sid­ered Gabriel’s un­cle one of the best kings in the his­tory of Cal­eva.

Quinn’s gaze shifted back to Luis, who lounged in his chair, sip­ping his wine. It was odd to think that this liv­ing, breath­ing man would be­come a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure in a text­book.

“As an Amer­i­can, you must find it strange that we are gov­erned by a king,” Lorenzo said, as though he’d no­ticed the di­rec­tion of her gaze.

She wanted to stran­gle Gabriel’s fa­ther.

“Do you find it strange that the Amer­i­cans are gov­erned by a pres­i­dent?” Gabriel jumped in with an edge to his voice.

Lorenzo looked star­tled. “Why would I? They re­belled against a monarch cen­turies ago. That is why I won­dered how Quinn feels about our form of gov­ern­ment.”

“I’d be in­ter­ested in her thoughts my­self.” Luis’s half smile was back.

“Un­fair!” Raul said from his end of the ta­ble with a dis­arm­ing laugh. “You’ve caught her be­tween a rock and a hard place.”

The king was test­ing her met­tle. She wasn’t go­ing to back down. Tak­ing a deep breath, she turned to Luis. “I think of you as a pres­i­dent with a very long term in of­fice,” Quinn said. “You have a bi­cam­eral leg­is­la­ture and a na­tional high court, so it’s not that dif­fer­ent in struc­ture from the U.S.”

“Does that make me the vice pres­i­dent?” Raul asked, still try­ing to res­cue her.

“You’re more like the press sec­re­tary,” Gabriel chimed in. “You look good on cam­era and de­flect all the hard ques­tions.”

“And here I was go­ing to dub you Speaker of the House,” Raul said, shak­ing his head. “In­stead, you will be de­moted to mi­nor­ity whip.”

“You know a lot about the U.S. gov­ern­ment,” Quinn said to Raul.

“I tu­tored him and Gabriel in its struc­ture,” Lorenzo ex­plained. “As you pointed out, it has sim­i­lar­i­ties to our gov­ern­ment. It’s use­ful to com­pare the two and draw lessons from them.”

She de­cided not to ask what lessons be­cause she feared it wouldn’t be flat­ter­ing to her na­tive coun­try.

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