"The usual way," he said carelessly. (He was monstrously pleased internally, both that she was playing along with the conversation as he'd envisioned it now and that she had compared him to his father). "She tried to marry me. And she was practically rabid when it didn't work out."

None of this was a lie, technically. This was his strategy: that he could tell her enough of the truth that anything Valencia told her, later, would have lost its teeth. Valencia wasn't going to tell her the whole story, either, he was sure of that. No one walked up to a woman like his mother and admitted to getting themselves into trouble, being pressured by their family into marrying, and then giving herself up without first asking whether or not he was free to marry. And if she tried to start in directly with an accusation pertaining to deception or bigamy — well, she had no proof of that, he knew. He could merely ask her to produce this alleged first wife, and she would never be able to — Ana was gone now. It would be easy to spin it as a desperate ploy by a jilted and jealous woman.

"I was worried when I saw her approach you and my sisters that she was cooking up some new plot," he continued. "But I'm pleased to hear it's nothing to do with me."

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