It is, all things considered, a very nice drawing room. Portraits adorn the walls and the heavy drapes are open to let starlight from the moonless night through. There's a table far too small for the large room with a pot of tea, a set of tea cups and an arrangement of cookies and fruit. Two oaken doors are firmly closed to one side, and to the other a single door is slightly ajar, the sound of sobbing coming from past it. Every once in a while it's possible to hear a page being turned in the other room as well. The drawing room on its own is silent, save for the ticking of a grandfather clock and then, with no prelude, an exclamation.
"Might just be size? As far as I know the Mediterranean doesn't generate hurricanes or typhoons, so I don't think it can just be salt content. But I haven't studied this."
"I don't think that's true, most people would have told me to be quiet after I started discussing downdrafts, or left."
"I can find your interest in the weather entertaining without also having my own independent interest in the weather."
"Oh. I wonder if that's what Lucette is doing. For a while I just thought she was being very polite but then it turned out she actually was paying attention to what I said."
"Well, she still knows more than other people and gives me very nice weather books on my birthday each year and reads the weather books I give her on her birthdays."
"My parents brought me to a dinner at her grandfather's estate and Lucette didn't mind me and they were desperate enough for me to have a friend to make me more normal that they decided she was better than nothing, even if her mother married a commoner."
"Well, I don't bite people for interrupting me when I'm cloud gazing anymore."
"Also my siblings stopped interrupting me so much once they got older.... Sufficient numbers of downdrafts for long enough can shape a storm to create a very narrow cloud front that's very intense, I haven't seen it but I've heard reports from two different places, and supposedly they are strong enough to blow over horses and I'm not sure if I could fly through one but I've always wanted to try."