The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(28)

Freddy tucked her feet into the rungs of the stool and rested her forearms on her knees. “Fiona’s just picked up the rights for the Allegra Hawthorne stage adaptation, and she’s scouting me for it. I haven’t done a stage spectacular or any comedy for a while, though, so she wants to see how I do with The Austen Playbook.”

Griff set his file down. His hands were large and strong-looking. “And it’s a job you want?”

Freddy tapped the back of one heel against the wooden stool leg. “Yes. It is. I’m a huge fan of Allegra Hawthorne, and it’s the sort of role I love.”

“It’s the sort of role that made you so popular with audiences in the first place,” Griff said levelly. “When you obviously feel passionate about what you’re doing, your performance has a very visceral joy that affects every person in the theatre.”

For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was the tap tap tap of Freddy’s shoe against the wood. And probably the creaking sound as she tried to close her jaw after it had performed the anatomically difficult feat of dropping to the floor. “Calls me a contagious joy fairy when we’re alone in a dusty backroom. Compares me to a stagnant pond in a London newspaper. Timing, my friend. It’s a beautiful thing.”

“My judgment in London is based on what you give in London. And for the past few years, that’s been a stream of—for the most part—competent, steady, totally uninspired performances in dramas that seem to suck the life out of you.”

Well. She’d always known he had the ability to cut to the chase with a few well-chosen words.

“So, what’s the problem?” Griff asked, coming around to sit on the edge of the desk. “Are rehearsals off to a bad start? Other than the obvious.” He nodded at her leg.

“The scene changes are going to be a challenge, and it’s taking me longer than usual to get off-book. I’m a bit gun-shy about getting lines wrong now,” she added ruefully.

“What did happen with Masquerade? You don’t usually make errors like that.”

Freddy lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I just—blanked. They’d just announced the new year-long run of The Velvet Room, and of course my father was—is—dead set on having me in it. The definitive Carlton play. I’d always wanted to be in it, myself,” she said slowly. “Ever since I was a little girl. Even through my early teens. I wanted to be just like Henrietta. And then—”

“And then?” Griff was regarding her very steadily, and something about his calm presence—and frankly, his no-bullshit responses—made it easy to say things to him that she never said aloud.

“My career is moving in the direction everybody expects me to follow—the classical dramas, the high-brow, serious, top-of-the-tree works that the big names in the arts discuss over champagne at posh parties. It was Henrietta’s domain as an actor, and then as a writer.” She bit down on the inside of her lower lip. “It would have been my father’s if he hadn’t been hurt.”

“How did it happen?” There was an unexpected shade of gentleness in the question, and Freddy felt a sudden burn at the back of her eyes.

“It was a freak accident. I was just a toddler. My mother had died the year before. Dad was playing Iago at the Majestic, and our nanny brought me and my sister along to see him at rehearsal. A set toppled backstage, and I was standing right under it. Dad was coming offstage and he just—dove for me. I was too young to remember anything about it.”

“You weren’t hurt?” Griff reached forward and, just for a second, touched her hand. As he straightened, their faces passed close together, their eyes locked, and Freddy felt as if her breath was stuck in her throat.

Then he retreated, and the picture frame unfroze.

She exhaled. “N-no. No. Not even a bruise. But it badly damaged Dad’s back. He couldn’t walk at all for a few months, and even now he can be on his feet for only a short time before he has to rest, or he gets a lot of pain. It pretty much put paid to his career on the stage. He couldn’t cope with the physical demands.”

But Rupert Carlton had grown up taking the perks and prestige of his position in the West End for granted, and he had found a way to keep a foothold. First through the success of his biography on Henrietta, which had led to multiple book contracts for other members of acting royalty, and then through his daughter.

“Is that why you’re forcing yourself to take roles you don’t really enjoy?” Griff, as always, cut straight to the heart of the matter. “Because of a misplaced sense of guilt? Do you feel responsible for the accident?”

“In some ways,” Freddy admitted. “It’s hard not to feel that way, when I was the...impetus. Logically, I know it was an accident, I was a child, and it wasn’t my fault, but part of the reason my father has invested in my career is because of what happened to his own, and I was a factor in that equation. I’ve found it difficult to look at what he’s helped me achieve so far, and know he wants for me what he couldn’t have for himself, and contemplate turning around and saying, ‘No, ta, not for me.’” She blew out a long, frustrated breath. “But it was me, as well. I really thought that was what I wanted. Until I actually had a go at it, and realised I’d been much happier doing the musicals, the stage spectaculars, the comedies. I like to make people happy, I like to hear laughter and see them leave smiling and humming the songs. I like popular fiction of all kinds, and I think it’s just as important as the lit that gets taught in class. I got to go back to my roots for the royal charity performance and it was like changing shoes and realising you’ve been walking around wearing the wrong size. I still enjoyed myself in a lot of those dramas—”