The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(19)

Ever so slightly, his eyes narrowed.

Just a little, her chin lifted.



Chapter Five


There was a myth that the countryside was peaceful. That might be true beyond the borders of Highbrook.

The memory of waking up in his childhood bedroom to the sound of his mad parents practicing their latest hobby on the south lawn—bowls, air rifles, paintball, insert the passion of the moment—was so fixed in Griff’s mind that he still sometimes woke to revving engines outside his flat in Notting Hill and for a few seconds thought it was his mother’s model airplane.

A dozen actors doing yoga on the patio at the crack of dawn were comparatively easy to ignore. He caught a few words of the motivational mantras one of them was spouting. Listening to the trite affirmations that twenty-somethings liked to emblazon across Instagram, while waving his arms and arse about before he’d even had a coffee, would not set him up for a successful day at work. It would send him quietly homicidal.

“Failure will never overtake me—”

Griff cast his eyes up and set off for his run, cutting across the lawn towards the back road through the south fields, which were blessedly free of staring, glaring, babbling people. The only nosy gaze he encountered on the route belonged to his father’s old Hereford cow. He stopped to catch his breath and she whuffed hers over his fingers as he gently rubbed her head. Ruefully, he spread his other hand over his ribs. He was getting out of shape. Gym sessions had gone on the backburner.

With a final stroke of the cow’s greying muzzle, he checked his watch and kept going, trying to ignore the invisible weight of the paperwork waiting on his desk. Another load of unexpected bills had joined the heap, and he’d had to take a temporary sabbatical from his theatre column for the Westminster Post just to grab a few hours of sleep each night, which meant even less income currently coming in.

His shortened breath burned grimly through his lungs as he picked up his pace. At this point, they needed both the film to come together and The Austen Playbook to go off without a hitch, or they were in serious danger of losing the place.

Although there could be an estate agent’s placard at the gate and a bank manager nailing wooden boards across the front door, and Charlie would just make an airy comment of na?ve optimism. Probably before he came up with another crackbrained scheme, lost interest halfway through, and traipsed happily back to his cocktail crowd in the City until the next time inspiration twinged. And exactly the way their parents, no matter how much they overspent, and how bad the financial situation was, always tossed out a few words about everything turning out well in the end, before they turned their backs on reality and went back to whittling tiny townsfolk out of expensive mahogany.

The sun was rising higher in the sky. It was going to be a beautiful day. The birdsong of the skylarks in the trees came from so many directions that it seemed to hang suspended in the air, like a lace of interwoven melody. It was difficult to maintain a bad mood in that setting.

Difficult, but he managed.

Aided when he turned the corner by the oldest tree on the property, an enormous, towering oak that his mother had, long ago, told him contained dozens of tiny rooms inhabited by gnomes and fairies. He’d heard her out, then offered a few short, pertinent facts on the concept of a tree trunk. Charlie had been born shortly afterwards, and she’d found a more receptive audience for her flights of imagination.

Over a quarter of a century later, the majestic old tree seemed to have picked up its first fairy, but there was nothing ethereal about her. More like a force of nature. She was sitting against the monstrous base of the tree, wearing a rainbow-striped T-shirt and incredibly short shorts, with that explosion of disorderly hair a tangle against the bark. She appeared to be trying to fix a broken lace in her left trainer.

“Oh.” Freddy looked up at him through the frenetic dark mop and shoved a handful of curls out of her face. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” He took in the shoe problem, knelt at her side, and reached into his pocket.

“Dear me,” she said with suspicious blandness. “It’s not a Mr. Collins situation, is it? I really prefer to have my breakfast before I receive unsolicited proposals.”

He found one of the cable ties he’d been using to fix the broken wiring in the library this morning, inserted it through the top loops of her trainer and fastened it tightly, then glanced upwards. Her face was very close to his, and he looked straight into her sparkling eyes. There were faint dark smudges under them, but she exuded a warmth that he almost felt as a physical sensation, as if, without touching him, she was heating his own skin. That attitude of suppressed laughter was one he’d often found grating on stage, but out here in the sunshine, he felt that same sudden and strong tug of attraction he’d experienced in the library yesterday. It was like trying to bury something in the sand, only to have the wind persistently blow it back into his line of sight.

And he was still down on one knee, like he was serenading her in a fucking comic opera.

“I only propose to women I barely know on Saturdays.”

“Funnily enough,” she said, “I’m starting to feel like I’ve known you for ages. Power of the written word, I suppose. All these years of reviews, it’s a bit like having a one-sided correspondence with a really crabby, judgmental pen pal.”

Sticking with the theme of a one-sided conversation, he didn’t bother to respond to that. He stood, and after a hesitation, reached down a hand. She took it and he pulled her firmly to her feet, then tried to let go of her.