They drank the lake water greedily. Within seconds, her garments weighed 40 pounds. They dragged her down into the murky darkness. Panic, raw and animalistic, seized her throat.
She kicked her legs, but the soaked skirts tangled around her ankles. A heavy net pulling her toward the silty bottom. Water rushed into her ears, drowning out the bright, sunny world above. She opened her eyes but saw only a swirl of green and brown.
I am going to drown, she realized. The thought was icy and clear. I'm going to drown in a man-made pond because Victoria didn't like the way her fiancé looked at me. She felt her lungs scream for air.
Her chest burned against the rigid stays of her corset. Her hands clawed blindly at the water. Then a sudden, blinding rage cut through the panic. It was a quiet, lifelong anger.
The anger of eating cold leftovers in the kitchen. The anger of being spoken to like a slow-witted child. The anger of mending the same hem three times while watching girls like Victoria throw away silk gowns because of a spilled drop of tea. She refused to die here.
She absolutely refused to let the last thing she heard be the polite, horrified gasps of the aristocracy. Norah stopped thrashing. She let herself sink for a split second, feeling the squelch of the muddy bottom beneath her boots. She bent her knees, planting her feet firmly in the muck.
Then, with every ounce of strength left in her starved, tightly laced body, she pushed upward. She broke the surface with a violent, agonizing gasp. Water streamed from her hair, plastering it to her skull. Algae clung to her cheeks.
She was treading water frantically, her arms burning as she fought the immense weight of her ruined dress. She sucked in breath after ragged breath, coughing up a mouthful of foul-tasting lake water. The garden party was dead silent. The string quartet had stopped playing.
A hundred pairs of eyes were fixed on the water. No one moved. The men in their pristine coats, the women in their pastel silks, they stood frozen on the lawn like porcelain dolls. Above her, on the stone bank, stood Victoria.
Victoria's hands were clamped over her mouth in a pantomime of absolute horror. "Oh, heavens!" Victoria cried out, her voice echoing too loudly in the quiet. "Norah, you clumsy fool. You slipped. Help her! Someone fetch a gardener!"
Norah treaded water. She didn't cry for help. She didn't weep. She simply looked up at Victoria.
Norah's gaze was dead. It held no plea for mercy, no embarrassment, no shame. It was the look of a woman who had just stared death in the face and realized the world she lived in was entirely devoid of value. She turned her eyes to Henry.
The Duke stood beside his fiancée. He was not frozen like the others. His coat was already unbuttoned, his hands gripping the lapels, preparing to strip it off and dive in. But when Norah met his eyes, he stopped.
He saw what she was feeling. He saw the cold, furious humiliation and the absolute refusal to be rescued like a stray dog. Norah turned away from them both. She paddled heavily toward the sloped, muddy side of the bank, ignoring the stone ledge where Victoria stood.