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Sophie feels a little guilty about it. Not about inviting each of them without warning them; at least one of them wouldn’t have bothered to show up if she’d told them about the others. Most likely Nate. Hardison might know, depending on how Parker and Eliot chose to travel. Parker might know, because Parker doesn’t pick up on what anyone else would, then sees things that no one else does. Eliot… Well, Eliot might not know, but he might just hope.
No, the thing Sophie feels guilty about is conning them. At this point, she’s not conning her crew—no matter how she feels about it, they separated, and they’re not technically crew anymore. She also knows that Parker’s the only one who might agree with the technicality, and even Parker won’t be happy about it. It’s just that this has been a part of Sophie Devereaux for as long as she’s existed, has been a part of her core for even longer:
She can’t act. She can grift, she can make people believe in the most improbable things, she can do the best kinds of improv, but give her a script and an audience and all of that goes away. And everyone believes that.
Having a script can be a challenge, yes, but it’s not that unsettling. She can act just as well on the stage, for a camera, as anywhere else. Sometimes, she even chooses to do so. But most of the time, she views it as another challenge—acting poorly enough that no one can believe it’s anything other than natural lack of talent.
At this point, she doesn’t know how they’d take it. Nate would be perturbed that he never guessed. Parker might just approve. It’s Hardison and Eliot that she’s least sure of, especially given Eliot’s reaction the last time she’d conned them.
If she’d known they were watching—if she’d known she was auditioning, if she’d had any idea what she was getting into—she might have given them a better Lady Macbeth in Chicago. She might have dropped it into a conversation, sly, after they heard her winding Dubenich around her finger. Bloody hell; she’d thought they might appreciate it right up until Eliot lost his temper about conning them.
(Nate being upset about it would have held more weight if he hadn’t been spiraling for months. Eliot, who is so patient, whose outbursts were almost always controlled, almost always performative rather than real? That was another matter.)
If this works. If they do. She doesn’t know that she can give it up, any more than she can give up any of her other identities, other carefully contrived idiosyncrasies. But maybe, if this works, if it all goes well, maybe she can give them this truth.
For now… It’ll get them to Boston, it’ll get them all in the same space, and it’ll give them something to talk about afterwards. That’s a start.