Ford could bandy about literary criticism when it came to poetry all day, but discussing sex so openly was another matter entirely, and one he felt wholly unprepared for. Probably because he'd never had any real life experience with it, and — well, even if he had, it wasn't the sort of thing one was supposed to just talk openly about it bookstores, was it? Where anyone might walk in at any moment?

"Well, I suppose you'd know better than me," he mumbled, cheeks still flushed dark red. He meant because he'd never been in love, and from the way he was talking this fellow presumably had, though it he took the comment as a sign of Ford's sexual inexperience... well, it wouldn't have been incorrect, and he didn't think he ought to be ashamed to admit that. He was only twenty-four, and unmarried, and despite what Witch Weekly said he had no intentions whatsoever of playing father to Begonia Belby's illegitimate children.