“And I could drive out and meet you all in my car,” Esther offered. “No one would follow me anywhere.”

“But you’d still have to get them back to the castle somehow, and if they roll up together . . . ”

“I’ll take one of them in my car,” Diane said. “We’d space out their arrivals.”

“Actually, I could go to the stables.” Sophia seemed to warm to the plan. “That’s where we’re supposed to be shooting, and I doubt the press is waiting there, but if they are, I’d just walk into work like I do every morning. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“But surely if you and Vic were both out all night, they’ll put two and two together?”

“They may try,” Sophia admitted, “but they won’t be able to prove anything, and it’s a hard sell if they placed Vic here all night and me on set miles away without anyone seeing me leave here. Besides, I’ve made my living playing cool and manipulative characters. I know how to shut people down. Go ahead—try me.”

Esther and Diane giggled at each other as Sophia schooled her expression into something resembling dry and distant.

“Ms. LeBlanc,” Diane tested, “did you spend the night at the Raven with Victoria?”

Sophia gave her a disdainful stare and bored sigh. “Victoria who?”

The dead tone, or perhaps the emptiness in Sophia’s eyes sent a cold wind straight to Vic’s core, and she pushed back from the table.

Emma regarded her with sympathy. Did she see the old wound opening again, or did she simply understand the choices that lay ahead? None of them would be easy, and none of them offered any real comfort. And while Vic had known that all along, nothing in her distant or recent past prepared her to hear those words from Sophia’s mouth. They might not have something lasting, or even something worth fighting for, but they were something to each other. They had something together. She would never be able to pretend they didn’t, and it hurt that Sophia could.

“No.” She rose to her feet.

Everyone turned to stare at her.

“I won’t lie,” she finally croaked out.

Sophia reached for her hand, but she stepped back.

“I won’t,” she said again, trying to force the frantic edge from her voice. “So far, the press hasn’t linked us together, and I’ll do nothing to help them along in those equations. The duke, his family, and his staff do not comment on the personal affairs of anyone in our household or our guests. That’s the official line, and I’ll have no problem delivering it, but I will not lie.”

“Vic,” Sophia whispered.