Noble nodded, but the motion felt jittery. "I didn't know him," he confirmed. He took a sip of his gin without really tasting it; he was going through the motions. It was like, Noble thought, they were both play-acting at being people who knew what to do in this situation. They had already been pretending to be people who could do this — save their family from ruin, be chaperones, get their sisters happily married off — but they clearly couldn't. Tonight had made that abundantly clear.

Noble had traced over the man's look what had to have been a hundred times since the moment he'd taken Verity, and each time he hadn't looked any more familiar to Noble. "And if he was Society —" Noble paused. The man had to have been Society enough to have been at the party, but there had been more people in attendance than Noble had expected — as if people had snuck in, or as if the hosts hadn't been as strict to inviting reputable people as Noble generally preferred. This was likely how the man had showed in the first place. Noble couldn't imagine likely kidnappers would usually be invited to parties, surely they had a vibe, like something was wrong with them, and so —

He cleared his throat as if that would help clear his head.

"Well, if he was Society, he wasn't someone we've ever thought about for one of them."

That was something, Noble thought — they hadn't considered a kidnapper a match for one of their sisters. It would have been funny, had he not been so convinced that Verity would never forgive him.

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