Noble was a night owl. He'd never had a job that stopped him from staying up late, and his insomnia had gotten worse after the Sanditon hurricane. If he went to bed before he was exhausted, he saw grasping, drowned hands reaching for him. So now he stayed up, and when he finally collapsed into his bed every night, he dreamed about drowning instead of letting it keep him awake.

Eventually, he'd noticed that Ford wasn't home yet. And it wasn't that Noble was staying up to keep track of his brother, but he was worried — what if Ford was doing stuff like that again, and what if he'd gotten caught? The last thing the Greengrasses could weather was a scandal — and even worse than that, they couldn't afford a lawyer.

So he was drinking in the sitting room when Ford got home. (Alcohol helped him sleep, too, and he was trying not to think about that.) Noble watched his brother cross the room, watched him pour a drink, watched it slosh and watched Ford double it. And then he spoke, "Everything alright?"

---