Vic’s brows knit together as if she still found her vow a little dubious.

“I’m serious. From here on in I’ll slip out of diva mode and fully into professional lead actress mentality. I honestly arrived early attempting to prepare more thoroughly. This character, this setting, the language, it’s so far from my own experiences. I worried about my ability to pull it off.”

“Does the accent scare you?”

She shook her head. “I have a coach who runs lines with me. I worry more about the intangibles associated with a life of privilege I’ve never lived. Wealth and power come with a whole different worldview. It affects the way a person walks, holds their head, takes up space. I don’t want to turn this character into a parody of royalty, but I also don’t want to come across as Louisiana trailer trash pretending to be a princess.”

Vic grimaced. “I’d hardly use those words to describe you.”

“Only because you don’t know me,” Sophia answered quickly and without an ounce of shame. “Those words absolutely describe where I come from and how many people still see me. I don’t sugarcoat any of my past, but I don’t dwell there, either. I’m too focused on the present and using it to create a future of my own choosing. As far as I’m concerned, I came from nothing and nowhere.”

“Believe it or not,” Vic said softly, “I envy that in a strange way. Not the poverty part, I’m not one of those members of the upper class who harbours petty illusions about the quaintness of being poor. I only mean the idea of not having a past worth feeling any sort of responsibility to.”

“You should try it some time,” Sophia said dryly.

“It’s not easy to do when people insist on introducing you as Lady Victoria Charlotte Algernon Penchant. There’s no escaping the past inherent in a name like mine.”

Sophia nodded thoughtfully, unable to argue that point, but not exactly feeling sorry for her either. She’d spent so many of her younger years wishing she possessed a name that would open doors, and then so many more trying desperately to make one for herself.

“Then again,” Vic pushed on with a little more playfulness in her voice, “surely a name like Sophia LeBlanc has some sort of backstory. It’s too interesting to have actually come from nothing and nowhere.”