Noble had his wand out, but he didn't know what to do with it — didn't move as Mrs. Cartwright stumbled over the edge of the boardwalk and tumbled into the waves below. He stood frozen for another beat, eyes caught on Miss Cartwright's hand over her mouth, and the thrashing of the waves — and perhaps, of Mrs. Cartwright — seemed amplified to his ears. He expected her to climb out right away — it was a bit of a drop, but not a terrible one — but as the seconds passed in that oceanside near-silence Mrs. Cartwright did not emerge.

It occurred to him all at once: Miss Cartwright couldn't swim because it was not ladylike. Since she was presumably even more ladylike, Mrs. Cartwright was likely also not able to swim. "Shit," Noble said. He held his wand between his teeth and tugged off his coat, dropping it to the boardwalk.

"I'm going to get her out," Noble said to Miss Cartwright, switching his wand into his hand again. Hopefully Mrs. Cartwright was fine — hopefully she was already on shore and planning his doom. Hopefully he was overreacting.

He jumped into the water. It was warmer than he'd expected, and gentler — hardly any current at all, and he could touch the bottom with his shoes. (Stupid — he should have taken off his shoes.) Surely Mrs. Cartwright could have handled this by herself?

Something pushed up against him in the water; Noble grabbed onto it on automatic but nearly dropped it when he realized it was a limp arm. He thrashed in the water when he saw her: Mrs. Cartwright. She hadn't drowned.

Instead, her head was at an odd angle where it had hit something — the pillar of the boardwalk, maybe — and her eyes stared at him, unseeing. Noble knew without checking that she was dead; her steeled himself and grabbed onto her arm again, and with a few kicks he was close to the boardwalk again. He reached up to hold onto the boardwalk itself, hold on.

"Miss Cartwright?" he asked.

Her mother was dead; should he be calling her Henrietta?

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