'You exaggerate,' the Señora said with a smile.
White-faced, her features wooden, Kara wordlessly got to her feet, unbuttoned the back of her dress, opened it to the shoulders and turned around.
After several long moments of shocked silence, the Señora said, 'Please, sit down, Kara girl. There will be no more talk of your leaving here.'
Kara turned around, reached back and fumbled with her buttons, and gasped when her fingers came into contact with a pair of warm, strong hands.
Roman, his eyes on his mother's, said 'Did I overhear correctly? That the man who did this is coming here?'
His mother inclined her head in distinctly Latin fashion. 'Her father, Roman.'
Kara felt her heart in her mouth at Roman's touch, and an attack of nerves as he sat down to join them, considering the glass room as though seeing it for the first time.
'An odd room, this,' he said with seeming irrelevance. 'Father used to say that it kept the world at a safe distance, that it allowed him to view the world without it having a chance to inconvenience him in any way. One may sit here in rain or storm and remain untouched. Yet what stands out most in my mind is a certain memory I have as a child- you see that section of glass up there, Kara, the one that has less green in it than the others? Well, a massive branch came crashing through it during a storm one night. We got up the next morning to find this room a terrible mess- dead leaves and branches, chips of bark and shards of glass everywhere.
'Father had this look on his face as he surveyed the damage, a look of betrayal that I will never forget. It seemed as though the breaking of the illusion this room represented shook him to the core for a time. But being the sort of man he was, he shook it off and would laugh about it, as was his way.'
'You are wondering what things might have been like had he been a different sort of man,' the Señora said.
Roman gave Kara an unreadable look. 'I am. Regardless, Mother is right, Kara: you will remain here until your father arrives.'
'I am not going back with him!' Kara said whitely, looking as trapped as she felt. 'Not while I have breath in my body.'
'He is your father,' Roman said with an inscrutable look that made her go cold inside. 'Regardless what sort of man he is, he has certain rights that supersede yours. Besides, I find that I wish to meet him.'