“But ultimately, you and I both know you’ll be gone in a matter of weeks, or even sooner if you allow your professional life to spin out of control like you have over the last few days.”

Sophia’s jaw tightened.

“Oh, did you not know I knew about your problems at work?” The duchess threw Sophia’s own echo back at her. “You’re not the only one with a finger on the pulse of what’s happening around here. My question is why someone with your background would be willing to risk everything she’d fought for— unless, of course, she believed she had something to gain from it.”

Sophia bit her tongue, but she didn’t need to. She had no quick retort to offer. The duchess had just given voice to the questions she should’ve been asking herself all along. The movie, her goals, the steps she needed to take to achieve them, she’d never let her focus slip before, and yet she’d spent the last two days wrapped up in Vic and her legacy while her own life’s work began to unravel at the seams. What could she possibly stand to gain?

The duchess probably suspected she was after their power, money, and access, but she’d never want any of those things unless she’d earned them. And despite all the unsavoury aspects of her past, she would never take them at someone else’s expense, much less someone she cared about.

“What’s more,” the duchess pushed, “I worry that in the time it takes for my daughter to come to her senses, the damage to her reputation will already be done. But, make no mistake, she will come to her senses.”

She waited for some sort of reaction Sophia wouldn’t give her before going in for the kill. “Victoria will not throw away who she is for you, which is why you are insignificant to me. Deep down you and I both know what Victoria will choose in the end. She has six hundred years of honour and duty bred into her DNA. Do you even know what’s in yours?”

Sophia wanted to argue, she wanted to lash out, even punch her in the mouth. Sophia wasn’t the type of woman who stood silently while someone, anyone, treated her like the trailer trash she’d been born. But the righteous anger that had been her constant companion for more than a decade failed her now. She felt nothing as the duchess’s last barb landed, not because she was right about Sophia, but rather, because of the truth in what she’d said about Victoria.