Though she doesn't sound approving, it surprises him a shade that her husband is capable of such violence. She's never mentioned it before; maybe she's embarrassed. Then again she'd formed some kind of connection with Sandor before he'd gone missing and he wasn't exactly docile either. Perhaps jealousy and aggression are incidental traits of the men that tend to attract her, like domestic dogs and floppy ears. It's not their primary virtue.

"That's quite a beating. I suppose it wouldn't help if I offered to step in the middle of it if Jamie were to arrive?"

That would really only be displacing the damage from Claire's new husband to Jamie's fists. Michael knows what it is to have a vicious temper, so he guesses the fact that his face won't yield wouldn't stop him from punching.

Michael considers that if intervening in a fight won't help, perhaps he needs to intervene even earlier. For all that she loves him, Jamie sounds like he'd take away from Claire's overall happiness if she were to find a new, lasting love here. In that case, maybe it would be for the best if he were to find his way into the deepest parts of the woods and disappear before she ever knew he was here. Michael realizes that he doesn't know what Jamie looks like. That's a problem. He'll have to persuade Claire to share a memory in the most literal sense, sometime.

She doesn't yet have that new husband (or doesn't anymore) so he sets his plotting aside for when it's needed.

"Or a version of Jon. If who he is now thinks you're not worthy of him, know that he was never deserving of you in the first place. I am sorry for you, Claire. All too rarely do good people get what they deserve."

He can hear the water boiling from the kitchen, so he rises and heads back to prepare a mug for each of them.