"Oh, were you now?" She demanded, her cool tone gone in the wake of his defensiveness. "You and he worked that out, then? He accepted a challenge and was somehow agreeable to losing before it even began?" Melody didn't know much about the inner workings of duels to know what either man's thought process would have been, but she knew of the fundamentals through some books she'd come across.

She wanted to storm out of the room and slam her door behind her, but knew that should she move from leaning on the bed her knees wouldn't support her. "And if you were wrong? If you had lost? What then?" Melody never would have stopped him from leaving when it was just her — she couldn't have considering the circumstances of their marriage — to leave their child, though, was another issue entirely. Aldous, while friendly enough, would have been reluctant to take her in. "How could you have willingly risked leaving us?"