"No," he answered immediately, shaking his head. "It's not your fault. I've — I've acted the rake, haven't I?" As foreign as the idea was that he would go and do something like this on purpose, he could not deny that he had done it. Actions were more important than intentions, particularly when it came to something like this, where the consequences for both of them could have been so much worse than they had ended up being. It might take two to tango, but he was the one who was older and more experienced and who should have known better, regardless of how intoxicated he'd been. He had known better, and he'd gone through with it, anyway, because in that particular moment he had wanted it badly enough to ignore the fact that it was wrong — if that wasn't rakish behavior, what was?

"I thought you'd hate me," he continued hastily. It now seemed important to explain why he'd asked the question in the first place, so that she might actually believe that he hadn't been bringing up their conversation about kissing because he was looking to continue it. "Or that you wouldn't ever want to talk to me again, at least. And when you didn't write for so long..." he shrugged, still flushing. "It would've made sense if you never wanted to talk to me again. But — if that's not the case — I'm glad," he managed, tone becoming more strained as he drew nearer to a subject he didn't really know how to talk about. He hadn't had these sorts of problems before the Sycorax — but he had been young and brash, then, and he'd thrown around all sorts of words and concepts with ease because he hadn't really earned an appreciation for what they meant, yet. As a sailor of twenty-two, about to set sail and presumably make his fortune and his reputation within the course of a year, John Darrow could have come right out and said I'm very fond of you; a decade later, it was difficult just to admit, in a roundabout way, that he wanted to be able to keep seeing this girl.