Noble pressed his lips together. "I know," he said. Maybe he was picking up on Ford's clearly nervous energy, because his stomach was starting to hurt — but he knew that he absolutely could not betray as much to his brother. Ford was bad at lying, but Noble felt practiced at it — with his family, with Daff, with the whole world about Henrietta Cartwright and the Sanditon Hurricane. He was constantly lying, and that was the only thing he could think would help them.

"We're going to make it," he said, because even with that history, he did not yet have a lie good enough to assuage Ford's fears.