The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(102)
Freddy released the breath she was holding. “Good.”
“I also want you for the show.” Allegra grinned suddenly as Freddy made an audible surprised squeak.
It had been a long shot, but she’d hoped that maybe, just maybe, she’d be able to win back the opportunity to audition. She hadn’t thought—
“Ballsy, to include the audition tape with your email.” Allegra saluted Freddy with a flick of her fingers to her forehead. “Exactly the sort of thing Quinn would do in the books, in fact.”
“I love her,” Freddy said sincerely. “I get her.”
“Yes, I think you would.” Allegra was studying her. It was disconcerting, such insightful eyes in such a baby face, but Freddy was the last person who would underestimate someone in that respect. “I’ll talk to the team.”
A crew member called out across the studio. Five minutes until they went live and laid out their family secrets before the nation.
Freddy hesitated. “Fiona Gallagher ruled me out of the running for a reason. You’ll know...about my grandmother.”
The entire world seemed to know about Henrietta Carlton at this point.
Henrietta had wanted enduring fame, but this probably wasn’t what she’d intended.
“And I believe you had a...um, situation yourself with your first manuscript that I expect you’d rather forget.” Freddy tried to put it tactfully.
Shadows flickered over Allegra’s face as she looked across the studio at Sabrina, and then at Rupert, before that shrewd hazel gaze returned to Freddy. “I know what it’s like to take a public fall because of someone else’s mistake. And I know what it takes to rise above it. In my head, you’re my Quinn. I’ll throw my backing behind you.”
Freddy couldn’t find the right words. Eventually, she just said, “Thank you.”
As Sabrina waved Freddy over, Allegra turned at the studio door. “The miniatures—They’re fantastic as they are, but we’ll need more. A lot more. Do you think the artists—”
Drily, Freddy said, “If you need extravagance and excess, you’ve come to the right place.”
An assistant bustled around her with a powder brush, removing the sweat that had sprung up on her forehead during the past few extraordinary, exhilarating minutes, and Freddy joined Sabrina and her father on the studio couch.
As she smoothed her skirt repeatedly and then tucked her nervously fidgeting hands under her knees, she looked at Rupert. “Are you sure about this, Dad?”
Sabrina looked at him sharply. It was blatant that she still half suspected him of playing a game. Their relationship was even more fractured than the difficult bond between Rupert and Freddy, and it wasn’t going to be magically transformed.
Rupert swallowed visibly and had to clear his throat a few times, but quiet determination threaded his features. “I’m sure. Let’s put the record straight.”
The screens behind them switched on, and two large portrait photographs appeared. Henrietta’s vivid, confident, beautiful face stared defiantly from one; Violet’s haunted, reserved expression filled the other.
“Where’s Griff—” Sabrina hissed, but he came into the room at that moment, with about ten seconds to spare, not looking in the least sweaty or harried. His expression, Freddy noted fondly, was set at his highest level of implacable don’t-fuck-with-me.
Brushing aside the advancing makeup artist with a brief word, he joined them, sitting beside Freddy and taking her hand.
“Don’t rush or anything,” Sabrina muttered, and he lifted a brow, then bent his head so his mouth was right next to Freddy’s ear and out of range of the microphones.
“All right?”
She knotted her fingers through his. “You don’t think this will make things worse?” The last-minute apprehension came out in a whisper.
His grip tightened reassuringly on hers, and unexpectedly, faint lines of amusement appeared around his eyes. “Chin up, darling. Nobody handles a PR crisis like a Slytherin.”
She repressed a startled huff of laughter as a camera swung around, the crew hushed, and a woman in a cap raised her hand, counting them in with her fingers.
The red light beamed out.
Sabrina’s practiced smile was absent tonight. She looked down the camera, directly into the invisible faces of their critics across the country, and nodded, as if acknowledging their right to suspect, to judge, to condemn. “Fame. Romance. Tragedy. Betrayal. This is the tale of two women, two families, and one of this country’s greatest works of literature. Revelations over the past few days have been an enormous shock to me, and I know that many of you are equally bewildered.”
Smart opening. It had always been one of Sabrina’s strengths as a presenter, that natural, approachable warmth, her ability to establish a rapport with her audience.
“Even those of us who don’t regularly attend the theatre—and I admit that I don’t spend as much time in the West End as I should, given that I have a stage star in the family—” Sabrina’s smile was rueful and appealing “—most of us will be familiar with The Velvet Room from the English curriculum at school. What I didn’t know, and what almost nobody has known all these years, is that the story behind the writing of that play is more dramatic, more passionate—” her smile flickered and faded “—and more hurtful than the words in the script. Mistakes have been made, and a very talented woman has been robbed of her voice, and I hope...” She turned her head and looked at Rupert, in a mannerism that was, to Freddy, less calculated than the rest of the rehearsed performance. She heard her father exhale slowly as Sabrina finished quietly, “I hope tonight we can start to right some wrongs.”