There were no photographers here. No journalists to keep a stiff upper lip for. Just one regal yet terrified woman, shoulder dislocated by a man who most likely swore to love and cherish her in sickness and in health. (He knew: he had been at enough of his Christian peers’ weddings staring enviously on.) He was not nearly as guarded as he should have been.

She was in pain.

Zechariah blinked at the next admission. A thousand thoughts raced through his head, and a thousand more said ‘not now, stay on topic’.

“Is he mad?” Zechariah let out with high brows. “The reckless young woman who went out without a chaperon, was kidnapped in result … and then eloped down out of class?”

Thank God. Something the law actually saw fit to punish that was actually bad.

“Tell me if I am hearing this correctly,” he urged. “Your husband, recently taken by drink and, ahem, unusual stressors …” he stuck out one index finger and tapped it with the other, “decided to write everyone competent out of his will, including his dependent wife and likely children who will be left to die in the workhouse in such straits,” he stuck out another finger and tapped it with his index as he rattled off, “to leave it to the only other child who has made half the stir as his firstb-” he glanced to Anne Carrington, mother of Magnus IV, and cleared his throat, “-the only surviving child who is clearly struggling with her own … issues … and,” he tapped the finger he had missed and then the next: “she is neither male, competent, married to a man of her own class … nor even legitimate?”

Zechariah clasped his hands before himself and leaned forward.

“Has this man been examined by an alienist of recent, Mrs. Carrington?”