The blush only darkened.

“For money,” he answered, quickly, readily. “The pleasure women feel is in money.”

Right? went unstated, but his statement almost ended in a question mark nonetheless.

Oh, thank God she was talking about his dead brother. Now he just wanted to cry instead of join him.

“He was-- more of a murderer than a brother,” he frowned in voiced realization, the thought only finishing made corporeal. “But he was a good man.”

Weirdly, he wished he’d settled for crying. That wouldn’t come with the thoughts.

“No, you can’t,” he agreed, but kept along.

He looked distant, maybe a little red-eyed now that the blush had faded.