It was nice of him to say so, but Henrietta wasn't convinced. She sniffled again. "But it's not. After you apparated me out of the Black Lake —" she hiccupped. "And tried to stand up to Mama for me, and —" Henrietta glanced towards the door, where the wind was still battering the building loudly. She stopped short of articulating that he had done all of that, because it was clear that he hadn't exactly intended to do all that for her sake. Her meaning was clear, however. He had done so much for her, on multiple occasions, and all the while she hadn't known his name.

Henrietta took a shuttering breath and tried to stop crying. After a few breathes she thought she had it under control, and managed to take her hands away from her eyes long enough to look at him. "N-Noble," she said, past a lump in her throat. She'd never called an unrelated man by their first name before in her life, and if she'd had to guess when it would happen, tonight during the ball wouldn't have been particularly high on her list. "Wh-what happened?"

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Rune made this! <3

He ought to try to reassure her more, because asking for introductions could be hard for young ladies and because they still needed to discuss the death of her mother. Besides that, he had done all those things for Miss Cartwright not because of who she was, but because they were the right thing to do.

But when she mentioned the storm outside, Noble couldn't help but glance at the door, and he felt the chill in his bones from the wetness of his clothes like it had come anew.

Her question — tied with his name, so she knew now — was easier to answer. Noble turned back to her and swallowed before he answered. He was still trying to fathom this himself.

"I think the weather charm was broken," Noble said. With the wind that had started when they were on the docks, and he was looking for her mother — he could not have caused all of this. But he admitted: "And — I think I made it worse." He felt a pang of guilt, deep in his gut, for damage he was sure would come to the Sanditon buildings.

But this had to blow over sooner rather than later, right? He hadn't meant to do anything serious to the weather charm.

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set by Bee

Henrietta had been surrounded by magical mishaps for most of her life, so the idea that the weather charm had already been broken before he'd started casting didn't surprise her in the least. Magic was always unreliable, from her perspective. If the spell he'd cast had made things worse, though, that seemed potentially problematic - at least if this storm was going to continue on in this fashion and draw the attention of everyone in the nearby ballroom. If someone started looking into what had gone wrong with the weather charms, then this would have accomplished the exact opposite of what they'd been hoping to achieve.

"Will anyone be able to tell it was you?" she asked in a tone quiet enough to be barely audible over the roaring of the wind. Maybe they ought to move further inside, because the hallway was starting to feel less like a sanctuary with every angry gust, but drawing closer to the ballroom would put them into a different kind of danger. They were still alone together, and now had both very visibly been outside together; questions were bound to be asked, and they still had no answers.

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Rune made this! <3

Noble glanced back outside and was tempted to flinch. "I don't think so," he said. They would have to check his wand for that, tonight, and to do that they would have to suspect him.

There would be no reason for them to suspect him, as he was a respectable member of society with no documented history of tampering with spells. At least, there was no reason to suspect him as long as Miss Cartwright didn't tell anyone about what happened tonight. (And what if she told someone later, and then they had some weird Ministry way to check things that Noble didn't know about?)

"Henrietta," Noble said quietly. Her first name still sounded weird to him aloud, but now wasn't the time to dwell on awkwardness. "It's very important that we don't talk to anyone about what happened tonight."

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set by Bee

Henrietta's chin wobbled slightly, but she didn't cry again. It wasn't the secrecy that bothered her, but rather the idea that she might face some sort of vigorous questioning about the incident. Just thinking about the possibilities of it made her feel queasy. If she was questioned by aurors or something, she would almost certainly faint. She wondered distantly if that would be a mark for or against her.

She nodded, then swallowed and pushed her hands down flat against her skirt in an effort to steel herself. She understood the stakes — all of the things she'd been worried Mama might do to her, except now long and drawn out with traumatic ordeals all along the way instead of visited swiftly in order to avoid gossip. "And if someone asks about the last time I saw Mama, what should I say?"

It would be obvious to anyone who looked at her that she'd been outside in the storm. She could go hide herself away in the lavatory long enough that it wouldn't be obvious she'd been out with him, but that would still be cause for questions, she thought. Particularly if they ended up finding Mama's body outside after all.

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Rune made this! <3

Noble frowned. He hadn't gotten that far — because while he would surely never be asked about Mrs. Cartwright unless otherwise implicated, but Henrietta certainly would, even if they never found the body. This was her mother.

"Tell them you saw her go outside and lost her there," he said, because she had obviously been outside. (Noble was going to have to come up with another excuse for his having been outside, but he didn't want to ask her about it.)

"Or — you lost her at the party."

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set by Bee

Henrietta nodded, although in that moment she couldn't be sure whether she was capable of saying that with any conviction. She honestly couldn't recall whether she had ever lied before in her life, so she didn't know whether or not she was good at it. Henrietta spoke to strangers so rarely that she didn't have many opportunities. The typical social niceties didn't exactly count; no one thought were serious, anyway, so it didn't matter whether she was particularly sincere or convincing when she said them.

She felt like she ought to say something else, but she couldn't think of what. Thank you was not entirely appropriate, given that her mother had just died and now it sounded as though the entire world was rising up against them outside. Still... he could have left. When her mother first appeared outside, when Henrietta had tried to leave, when Mama had fallen off the boardwalk, once he'd realized there was no hope of saving her. He could have left at any point, because this had never been his mess to start with, but he hadn't — and even if things had gone about as wrong as they could possibly go, it seemed like the sort of thing he deserved at least a little gratitude for. She was frightened of what would happen next and she was feeling adrift and disconnected from everything and she was wet and cold, but at least she wasn't alone.

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Rune made this! <3

Noble had no other ideas, but she was nodding, and maybe they would get through this. "I'm going to try to head back to the ballroom," he said, after a beat. With things so audibly chaotic outside, he wanted to reconnect with his family — lest any of them try to go out and end up in trouble. He didn't know what else to say. I'm sorry didn't quite encapsulate everything, and he didn't want to lie to her and tell her that everything would be alright, because he wasn't convinced that it would.

"I'll see you around?" he tried, instead.

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set by Bee

Henrietta nodded again, then bit her lip. "You should dry off before you go back to the ballroom," she suggested. She felt a little strange giving him advice, or telling him what to do — if this counted as either of those things, she wasn't sure — but even with how much it had been raining, she thought this was too conspicuous. They were both wet, but only one of them looked like they had just gone for a fully-clothed swim in the ocean.

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Rune made this! <3

Noble nodded. He pulled his wand to cast a quick spell to pull most of the water out of his clothes — nothing to be done with his sopping hair, right now — and was relieved to find the spell obeyed him. Still slightly damp, and with guilt beginning to churn through his guts, Noble left her.

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set by Bee