“A wife always has her place and no one will take it away from her. But with a querida there’s no need to beat around the bush; she takes what she’s given and thanks you for it. It’s easier to live like that, isn’t it, ingeniero?”

Leonardo’s feint could have one of two consequences: either he would find out whether he was right about Julia’s being Fernando’s mistress and not his wife, or he would provoke a violent reaction. He wasn’t afraid of that: violence was his element. But neither outcome occurred. Fernando nodded distractedly. Was he the kind of cynic who controls his own passions in order to profit from the passions of others? Leonardo imagined a thousand traps around him, a thousand possibilities for extortion that his provincial astuteness was unable to envision. He would try, then, to gain some ground, to bring Fernando over to his side, to involve him in his own plans to such a degree that it would no longer suit him to go against them.

They rose from the table and went into the main room.

“It’s a pity we can’t go out to the fields. I’d like you to see the ranch. I don’t want to boast, but. . . .”

Leonardo hesitated, torn between his desire to show off and his wariness as a landowner. Fernando took advantage of the pause.

“In any case, I’ll have to go over it at some point. You know I am making a map of the region.”

Leonardo bit his lip; that was precisely what was bothering him.

“Why make useless work for yourself, ingeniero? We already have maps; every owner of a finca has his own. And there’s no one who won’t put them at your disposition.”

Fernando sat down in the leather armchair and stretched out his legs.

“It’s odd,” he observed casually, pointing to the brazier. “The Spaniards who settled here never thought of building fireplaces. I’ve never seen a single one in the houses in Ciudad Real, and now I see that the ranches don’t have them either. In Europe there are fireplaces in climates less harsh than this one. . . .”

“Have you been to Europe, ingeniero?”

“For a few months.”

“The deceased”—this was how Leonardo always alluded to Isabel’s first husband—“was in Europe, too, and for a few years, not a few months. And I assure you, he wasn’t any the wiser for it when he came back. Perhaps the same might be true of you.”

It was the Coleto’s time-honored tactic: provoke the other man (the other man is always an adversary), make him lose his temper, show his face. But this time the tactic yielded no results. Ulloa kept smoking, calm and indifferent.

“That remains to be seen.”