Much of the furniture was gathered in one half of the room, the near half. The sofa, table and chairs were arrayed together around the fireplace. She came around them, but then she paused again. She stood by the sofa, with her hand on the back of it. That left an open space of some distance—the length of the Persian carpet—between her and her father. She did not cross that distance, but confronted him from where she was. Landscapes of brown crags and fog covered the wall to her left.

“Yes, what is it?” she said.

She couldn’t hold his gaze. Her eyes shifted away from him. To the window. Out to the abbey ruin. She could see Storm out there, afar off. He was moving beside the broken wall, walking among the gravestones. His coat was stirred by the wind. His hair was stirred by it. She wished he was here, in here, with her. What had he been about to tell her? Why was she so upset? She hated it.

Her father took a step towards her. Sophia felt her hand close more tightly on the wooden rail of the sofa back. Her father looked large, towering. His great head seemed hung bizarrely with loose flesh. His eyes were strange and quick and dangerous. With the black clouds rushing forward behind him, it seemed as if he himself were rushing at her.

“Why did you bring him here?” he asked her.

Sophia shook her head, confused. Tried to think of an answer.

“I don’t like him,” said Sir Michael. “I don’t trust him. What is he here for?”

“Trust him …?” said Sophia. She could not bring her thoughts to order. Why was she so afraid?

“Doesn’t it even occur to you to ask yourself what he keeps hanging around for?”

And Sophia heard herself begin to answer as if she were listening to another person: “Well, doesn’t it even occur to you that …?” She pressed her lips together.

“What?” he said. “Go on.”

“Well, he might be hanging around because, he likes me? It might not have anything to do with you and this … anything to do with you.”

Her father made an exasperated, dismissive noise. The clouds behind him flickered with unsteady light. The following thunder was loud.

“No,” said Sophia, uncertainly. “I mean it. I don’t know what the problem is …”

“For God’s sake, Sophia, don’t be childish.”

“Am I supposed to run my friends by you for approval?”

At that, he took another step towards her. Large, unfamiliar. “Friends like that, yes. There are plenty of suitable men around.”

Her hand moved nervously on the sofa back. She felt very small in front of him. And her knees were beginning to feel weak and shaky. “I don’t know what you mean by suitable. Richard is perfectly suitable …”