The stinger was that he could have done a great deal better that Camilla Zabini. (Of course, what truly galled her wasn’t the girl in question – who, admittedly, was quite well-matched to Fitz – but the haste of it all and the fact that her son seemed indifferent to her pain.)

“I can hardly dispute that,” Harriet admittedly, though it was more akin to getting blood from a stone than a blessing from one’s mother. “Why couldn’t you have waited? I assume you would have had the sense to at least wait to see if you strictly needed to do the honourable thing.”