“Half way through the party, old Slaggorn tracks me down where I’m shooting the breeze with the baroness. He’s smiling and insulting me without really insulting me — you know, nothing you can officially take offense at — and I just blow him off. I never was much good at the social games those lords and ladies like to play. I’m ignoring him, but I can tell he’s getting mad, so then he starts in on the baroness.
“Now, the baroness, she knows how to play these word games. She starts sparring with him, upping the ante, until she’s got him cornered. He either has to shut up and walk away, or step across that line and say something truly insulting. Either way, with all those fancy folks standing around watching, Slaggorn wasn’t going to get out of there with his honor intact.
“If he were a calmer man, Slaggorn would have graciously admitted defeat, offered a toast to the baroness, and spent the rest of the party on the far side of the boat. But if he were a calmer man, he wouldn’t have been Slaggorn. And he was mad. He didn’t pause for more than a second before he dove across that line.”
The old man finished off his bottle and reached for another.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He insinuated that the baroness had killed her father when she chose to marry the baron. Gave him a broken heart, he said. And then he said her father was better off dead, because he couldn’t see what his daughter had done to the family name.
“I couldn’t let that stand. I challenged that pompous ass to a duel. Reckon I had my sword in hand before he even accepted. If he’d said no, I probably would have run him through then and there.
