The idle tracing of her fingertips against her skin faltered only briefly when he came to the heart of the matter. To, she guessed, what might have been the cause of the tension that had borne iron in his shoulders and a tightness to his expression on that pirate ship she had not seen before. The months missing between them surely held the source, and where she was not then so calculating as to have invited him back to her room for an interrogation, she saw no reason why they could not, in the warm aftermath of it all, speak.

The night had a way of teasing secrets out of them all, after all.

Memories of the man she knew bearing that same title were never without their bitterness, leaving her voice low and only a touch flippant (could either of them bear it being entirely serious) when she replied, "They so rarely are." It was neither the time nor place for mention of her own father, but rather one she devoted easily to encouraging him to speak. "Had you known of him before?"