The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(10)

“What does that mean? The public heckles? We bring people onstage for magic tricks?”

“Interactive with the viewing audience at home, who will be voting through the studio app on multiple-choice options for how they want the play to proceed. So you would have to learn different variations of each scene.”

Freddy reached forward and flipped through a few pages. “And enact them with how much warning?”

“A few minutes, I imagine.” Lisa cocked her head. “Are we daunted to the point we’ve lost interest?”

Freddy turned over another page, reading some of the highlighted dialogue for Lydia. A tingle of excitement was beginning to fizz in her middle.

A sense of anticipation that she hadn’t felt in an age.

She still had no idea what she was going to do about her father and The Velvet Room, especially when the dilemma had now exploded with the addition of the Anathorn opportunity, but in the meantime...

It was a truth universally acknowledged that an actor in a rut must be in want of a spot of murder, mayhem, and true love.



Chapter Three


Present day

If a crew were doing establishing shots of Highbrook Wells today, it would look so impossibly lovely under the endless blue sky that cynics would assume the scene had been filmed in the tropics. In the warm light, the decrepit parts of the main house took on a charmingly lived-in appearance, the gardens smelled divine, and there were even two peacocks strutting about the lawn.

One of the avian variety. One of a more ubiquitous species.

Far from his usual habitat, a prime example of the classic Homo sapiens fuckboy, in rampant mating phase.

Paradise always did contain its share of snakes. “Dylan.”

Dylan Waitely turned on hearing his name. The moment he spotted Freddy, he stood up straighter and did something that elongated his shoulders. His expression wavered between a smirk and a frown.

The struggle to remember her name was real.

They’d only debuted in the same production of Oliver! back in the day, played wife and husband in an eight-month run of 1553 a few years ago, and stage-snogged in front of royalty. Easily forgotten.

“It’s Freddy,” she said with reluctant amusement. He was an arrogant prick and a serial cheat, and if Lisa had mentioned he was cast for this, she’d have had qualms. But it was just Dylan. No point expending energy on getting annoyed with him. He never changed.

“I know who you are, Freddy.” He was all injured gentlemanly charm. It would be more successful if she hadn’t witnessed him getting absolutely rat-arsed at a wrap party, whipping his trousers off, and drawing a smiley-face on his willy.

Once you’d seen a bloke doodling on his dick with permanent ink, the mystique was gone.

She pushed her sleeves up and wiped the back of her wrist across her forehead. She was wearing too many layers. It had been raining and cool when she’d boarded the train in London. She hadn’t expected Highbrook to exist in a sunny alternate universe, like a reverse Narnia. “I didn’t realise you were doing this. What part are you playing?”

Fifty quid said it was Wickham or Willoughby. He would have to expend no effort whatsoever to play one of the sexy, unreliable rogues. He even had historical-romance hair, longish and draped artistically over one eye.

Pretty please, God, don’t say Wickham. One fictional marriage to Dylan was enough for a lifetime.

He preened. “Fitzwilliam Darcy, at your service.” A wink. “And I am at your service, babe.”

“Darcy?” Freddy repeated after an extensive pause. “They’ve cast you as Darcy?”

“Jeremy Bury had it originally,” Dylan said, and yes, she had been under the impression that Jeremy was confirmed for Darcy. She’d been stoked about it, too, because he was an absolute gent to work with.

Dylan gave his pretty fall of hair an emphatic flick. “But they’ve made some wise changes to the cast since the press release. Star of the show, yo.”

Firstly: highly debatable. The actor playing Elizabeth, whom she sincerely hoped was still Maya Dutta, could argue for top character billing if she wanted, and not everyone considered Pride and Prejudice to be peak Austen, so Emma, Anne, Elinor and the rest of the primary women characters would also give him a run for his money.

And additionally: insert confused face and unintelligible exclamation here.

What a baffling choice on the part of the casting team. She wondered how it would be received by the public. Dylan was delicious to look at and he had the acting chops, but his behaviour was notorious and even the most infatuated fangirls would surely struggle to envision him as the stoic, secretly soft lover. And his ex-wife was doing the reality show circuit and her legions of fans despised him, so there was a lot of hate aimed his way on social media right now.

Freddy would go double or nothing that the voting audience opted for an unexpected plot twist in the whodunit. Darcy dead in the library. With a lead pipe.

Dylan’s gaze moved over her head with the glazed change of expression that usually meant he’d spotted someone with larger breasts. He walked off with barely a murmur. She turned to see the attraction, and her stomach dropped like she was on a hundred-foot rollercoaster.

Slinking across the lawn to join the gathering cast, hips swaying, body moving with the fluidity of rippling silk, Sadie Foster gave her cat-with-the-cream smile.

Hell.