The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(17)

She’d spoken lightly, but Griff set down the book he’d picked up from the desk and looked at her sharply. “Source material?”

“The Austens.” She gestured. “The play? The Austen Playbook? The reason fictional murderers are fondling your petals?”

Griff changed his stance, effectively dismissing her from his attention. “Help yourself. The books are there for reading.”

Charlie stopped spying on whatever was happening on the lawn and came to stand by the desk, prodding an incurious finger at a stack of old photographs, to his sibling’s obvious irritation. “He thought you were talking about this lot. The intel on Henrietta and co.”

Amazingly, he didn’t instantly shrivel like a raisin when his brother turned his head.

“Oh. Right.” Freddy stood and smoothed her skirt, her gaze on the hostile inhabitant of the room as she addressed the forthcoming one. “You mentioned Henrietta. And Wythburn Group first editions? Or was that just for Sadie’s benefit?”

“I try to retain a grain of truth in my embellishments. It’s more convincing.” Charlie picked up one of the black-and-white snapshots. “It’s for this big film Griff’s working on about your grandmother and The Velvet Room, and that whole nutjob crowd she used to hang with. Including our grandfather, so don’t worry, it’s not just your relations under the microscope.”

“A film?” Freddy took the photograph Charlie held out to her and looked at the beautiful lines and angles of her grandmother’s face. Henrietta was smouldering up at a man who had stern eyes and a faint smile, and was clearly Sir George Ford. Looks-wise, he was a Charlie replica. As was the man in a newer portrait on the mantel, whom she assumed was Griff and Charlie’s father. “The dad genes obviously run strong in your family.”

“Griff excepted,” Charlie said lightly. “Ma once said that if it hadn’t been for the twenty-hour labour, she might have thought he’d spontaneously animated from an ice sculpture.”

Freddy raised her gaze back to Griff’s face. That comment could have stemmed from her own early thoughts about him, and it didn’t cause so much as a flicker in his expression, but there were little arrows that only family could truly drive home.

“So, you’re doing a film about Henrietta?” She turned the subject back to its original point, and Griff leaned one hip against the desk. Now, there was definitely a fleeting shade of...something in his look. Surprise? Or calculation?

“Haven’t you heard about it? That’s surprising,” Charlie said.

She didn’t know why. There’d never been a feature film about Henrietta, but people had always written about her and featured her in theatre documentaries. They didn’t ring Freddy to tell her about it.

It was Griff who answered her unspoken query, his eyes watchful. “Your father has been expending a lot of energy and money trying to stop the project in its tracks for the past year. And attempting to block us from using any material from his biography.” He rested a hand on the familiar volume on the table.

All Her World, Rupert’s great achievement, the in-depth insight into Henrietta that had won him a Reinholdt literature award. The highlight of the writing career he’d established after his own future in acting had been curtailed. The writing career that her agent thought he should concentrate on, instead of juggling his time with managing—and directing—Freddy’s production portfolio.

“Apparently, he has plans in mind for a screen adaptation of his own.” Griff sounded bored. “However, as a lot of his personal recollections in the book are based on the time that Henrietta stuck him with a nanny while she was writing The Velvet Room—”

“And vamping Grandad into building The Henry.” Charlie was still nosing through photographs, and he passed Freddy one of the theatre in its early building stages, which she studied with interest. Henrietta was in this one as well, posing against the construction framework, in company with a slight woman with a dark bob, who wasn’t looking at the camera, and a cocker spaniel with an overgrown coat, also not looking at the camera.

“—we already have access to a lot of similar material, including reminiscences from people who weren’t snot-nosed kids at the time.” Griff flipped open the cover of Rupert’s prized biography and turned over a few pages. Something dismissive in the gesture raised Freddy’s hackles. Her father’s written voice was witty and personable; it was a good book, and it had deservedly done very well.

“He obviously doesn’t trust his family history in your delicate, notoriously sensitive hands, big brother,” Charlie said. “Can’t imagine why, after all those glowing reviews you’ve given his daughter over the years.”

After a few seconds in which Freddy chose to examine the chipped polish on her nails, and she couldn’t hear even the slightest ruffle of movement over by the desk, Charlie compounded things by adding, “Is there a reason your dad never mentioned it? Bit weird, isn’t it? Or does he have to battle off these hardnosed cultural types all the time?”

Considering that at present the relationship between Freddy and Rupert wasn’t so much a strong branch of the family tree as a dry, brittle twig, it wasn’t weird at all. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a conversation about anything other than the jobs she was booking, was not booking, or should be booking. She had no idea what her father did in his spare time, who his friends were, or upon which film productions he tried to heap obstacles. And this was the first she’d heard that he wanted to do a visual adaptation of the biography.