“We both knew this time would come.”

“No.” She choked on the word. “Maybe. Not yet.”

The sympathy in Sophia’s eyes made this harder.

“Things will settle down,” Vic said in the most level-headed tone she could muster. “I actually had a very helpful conversation with my father today, and then I went to the office to handle a few things.”

“And by ‘things’ you mean ‘the fallout from me daring to travel openly throughout your dukedom’?”

“Not that. Well, not entirely that.” Vic tried to cling to the positives despite the rising tide of panic inside her. “I actually spent much of the evening trying to reschedule the young filmmakers’ group that was supposed to observe the filming this week.”

“Who you had to reschedule because we aren’t filming, and we aren’t filming because everything’s falling apart around us, and the press—”

“The press has nothing on us,” Victoria cut back in. “A few opportunities arose for me to question some trusted contacts in a natural way, and they all maintained no one has connected us.”

“No one has connected us yet,” Sophia corrected, “but by the time they do, it’ll be too late.”

“We’ll deal with them when the time comes.”

“We won’t,” Sophia said with the same calm finality that made Vic’s stomach churn. “I won’t have to deal with any of it, or at least not anywhere near the bulk of it. You will bear all the pressure, all the risk, all the burden, and all the loss. I can’t accept that.”

“You bear no responsibility for my life or my choices.”

“You’re half right. I bear no responsibility, and that’s the way I wanted it, but I misunderstood so many things at the start.” Sophia gave her hand a little squeeze. “I didn’t know then what I know now. I was just playing around at first, teasing, and then I got too swept up in you to think.”

“Too swept up in me to think about my title, my job, my family?” Vic’s heart couldn’t decide whether to soar or shatter. She’d waited her whole life to have a woman be interested in her for who she’d become, not who she’d been born.

“I know you never lied to me about what you had at stake here, and I should’ve listened. A part of me did listen. Even from our first night together I wanted to understand you, but I had no frame of reference. Nothing in my own experience helped me feel the full gravity until last night.” She sighed. “It doesn’t even matter what I think or understand. What matters is that I refuse to be the thing standing between you and your people.”