“Oh, you can’t eat that with your fingers,” she muttered. She came around the table to the tall sideboard, pulled a knife and fork from one drawer, a linen napkin from another.

Storm was already tearing into a slice of breast, wrestling the meat off with tooth and claw. But he took the silverware from her without a word. Silently put the napkin on his lap. Salted the chicken again and attacked it this time with the fork and knife.

Sophia stood behind him, looking down into his sandy hair.

“Stop doing that,” she said finally.

“What?” he said. “I’m eating. This is the way we do it.”

“I mean stop thinking that. What you’re thinking.”

He set the knife and fork down. Scratched his head.

“My mother was a … sweet, liberal, charitable woman. Everyone says so. Everyone. I’m sure she didn’t have anything to do with any of your friend’s imaginary villains, or with anything. And to go out to Belham Grange and interrogate my father over a twenty-year-old tragedy … Maybe he hasn’t been perfect. Maybe he was once involved in some dubious business. I don’t even know that for sure …”

“Yeah, well, that’s the thing,” said Storm. He shifted in his seat to look up at her—to gaze up at her. Chewing his food, choosing his words, “You don’t know. You see?”

Sophia was turning away from him when he caught her hand. He held it, stroked the back of it.

“You don’t know, and it’s eating you all up,” he said. “You can’t think about it and you can’t think about anything else, so you can’t think about anything. You don’t know, so you can’t forget about it—you can’t forget about what you don’t know. See? That’s why I think you ought to do it. Because it’s got you all … bunged up and frozen.”

She drew her hand away, hugged herself with it. “That’s just … You’re just … talking about sex. It’s just not that important to me.”

He balled his napkin in his fist, set it on the table. Stood up, stood beside her, stood close. “I’m talking about you being depressed all the time. And having black patches. And being crazy, doing crazy things.”

She faced him and his power occurred to her again, more clearly, more frightening this time.

“I don’t want to do it, Richard.” She could not believe it: she was pleading with him now. “Asking my father about this, confronting him. It would be … too painful.”

“Painful?” He touched her hair gently. “Excuse me, but aren’t you the girl I saw throwing herself off a balcony? How painful was that?”