What were his concerns? It wasn't, particularly, that Ben had concerns about Melody having a job. He wasn't one of those stuffy sorts who thought women couldn't or shouldn't work. Some of the most interesting women he knew were working women, and he'd certainly met all sorts during his travels and as a cursebreaker. If he thought she'd be getting this job because it was something she wanted to do, he wouldn't have protested. That was partly the idea behind giving her the damn potion in the first place, after all — she could use it to make her husband more malleable when it came to nontraditional ideas like that, allowing her more freedom and the ability to go and pursue a hobby or a career if it would make her happy.

This didn't feel like something she was doing in order to be happy, though; it felt like something she was trying to do in order to be slightly less miserable, and it didn't seem likely to work. She probably hated this house, and how much her quality of life had suffered through marrying him. She probably thought she ought to get a job, because she thought that was something appropriate for a woman of her new social stature; that the newly-minted Mrs. Crouch ought to work in order to pull her weight and contribute to the household. In the end, though, it would just be another thing that disappointed her. It would rub her the wrong way because she wasn't built for this — she was built for high society life, which she'd thrown away by marrying him.

"If you're doing this because you feel guilty or something, don't," he said shortly. "It'll just end up being something else to resent me for, and I think we've got a long enough list already."