“Wild cat,” El Diablo replied. “There are a great number of them in these mountains, but that one, as you can see, is a remarkable specimen. They are not usually so big or so well marked. I was lucky to get a shot at him.”

“You have made yourself very comfortable here,” Skye smiled. “Have you been here long?”

“Nearly a year. It is my home and, like the French and the Spanish, I find no virtue in discomfort, only the British enjoy it.”

There was something in the tone of his voice that made Skye look at him quickly.

“You sound as if you are not a particular admirer of my countrymen,” she said.

“I admire their women,” he replied insolently and she felt the colour rise in her cheeks as he bent his head to light a small cigar.

“I must thank you for an excellent dinner,” Skye said hastily and added, her voice hardening a little, “but now I suggest we get down to business.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Business?”

“Yes,” Skye replied steadily. “I am well aware why you brought me here and there is no point in not being frank about it. The question is, how much do you intend to ask?”

El Diablo took a puff at his cigar before he answered, then, through a cloud of blue smoke, he said,

“You are an unexpected young woman.”

“You are not used to directness, I think,” Skye replied. “It is a heritage from my American mother that makes me ready to come to the point rather more quickly than is usual in your country.”

“So without any preliminaries you ask me to state how much money I require!”

“But let me warn you first, before you say too much, that it would be a mistake to be greedy.”

“And why?”

Again his eyebrows went up.

“If you ask too much, it may not be paid,” Skye suggested.

“You came here in a very expensive yacht.”

“Lent to me by a friend,” Skye said quickly.

He drew on his cigar before he replied,

“I must have been misinformed. I understood you paid a little over one hundred thousand dollars for her last January.”

There was silence for a moment and then Skye exclaimed,

“How can you – how on earth do you know?”

“You would be surprised how much I do know,” El Diablo said with a twist to his lips. “And I do not make my enquiries of strangers!”

“What do you mean?” Skye asked, feeling uncomfortable.

“The grocer, the baker, the butcher, or, as you say in England, ‘every Tom, Dick and Harry’.”

“I still don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do,” El Diablo insisted. “The questions you asked this morning in Jācara, the conversations in the shops, a flower-seller in the marketplace, they were all, if I am not conceited in saying so, about one person.”

Skye put her coffee cup down with a little bang on the table.