They were lucky to make it. For half of the walk back, Noble wished that his coat was bigger, so that he could tuck them both under it like an umbrella — for the other half, all he could think was please let us make it back inside, on repeat, a prayer to some higher power he had never believed in.

But they made it. Noble tugged the door to the Sanditon ballroom hallway shut behind them as the wind tried to force it back open. He could still hear the storm raging, winds and the rain that was buffeting the building — but they'd made it. The worst, Noble thought, was over. Puddles were forming beneath them on the hallway floor as the rain dripped down, but surely the worst was over.

He turned from the door to Miss Cartwright at the sound she'd made. Noble frowned. He wasn't sure if he should touch her again — it wasn't at all polite, but maybe they were still past any politeness inside, some pact they'd made when her mother hit her head on the boardwalk's pillars — but he couldn't just leave her there making sobbing-ish noises.

He especially couldn't leave her there because they needed to talk about what just happened, what they had done and what they did now, at least a little bit. (The pact didn't exist yet — they needed to form one.)

"Miss Cartwright," Noble said. And then, because they'd committed crimes together, "Henrietta."

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