She'd been looking at him directly, as if to challenge whether he was paying attention or not, but all of a sudden Lorcan found she had ducked her gaze, and that told him that she must be even more disheartened than she sounded. Her tone, too, was bitter, defeated, the sort of blunt and matter-of-fact that covered up real upset. He really didn't want to see her cry.

After a moment, the words sunk in, not just their delivery but their meaning. "Hm," he said, and blinked. That was a rather ungraceful move on their part, and a nasty way to hold a grudge. Lorcan didn't know the Backus family history in detail, but he was especially sure Maggie had had no personal part in it, so it hardly seemed fair to penalise her for her parents' choices. And he'd thought his family were a mad bunch!

He considered railing against her grandparents for a bit, to be indignant about the whole affair for her, as some kind of validation... but he didn't think that would end up much helping to ease her disappointment.

"Well, at least that's easily solved," Lorcan remarked instead, deciding to look on the bright side. (Though maybe that sounded a little too flippant, oops.)

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