The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(31)
“Like that. Thanks, if you’re sure.” Freddy took the mug and blew on the surface, eyeing both brothers through the steam.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Charlie said, a note of amusement creeping in. “I thought you’d be buried in work, not snogging the houseguests.”
“Things often take surprising turns.” Freddy smiled at him. “I love life.”
Creases appeared at the corners of Charlie’s eyes then, and the lurking humour at their expense turned into something softer. “Yeah, I reckon you do. It’s nice.” His attention slid pointedly to the side. “Be nice if it rubbed off on other people, too.”
“Thanks for the coffee, Charlie. Don’t let us keep you.”
Ignoring his brother’s acerbic response, Charlie rested his hands low on his lean hips and looked around. “I haven’t been in here for years.” His nose wrinkled. “It smells.”
“It’s called dust.” Somehow Griff knocked back the rest of his coffee in one go without incinerating his tongue. He put the cup aside. “It appears on surfaces when you don’t have staff or your unfortunate girlfriends cleaning up after you.”
“I thought the studio crew were polishing this place to a high shine to look good on camera.”
“The studio crew will be keeping their tramping feet and prying eyes out of the back rooms,” Griff muttered as he flipped up the camera screen and started checking through frames. “They’re hardly going to include Henrietta’s office in the show.”
“You could have whisked around with a duster, since you’ll be at least replicating the space for the film. The infamous four walls where she wrote the great epic.”
There were yet more aged photographs scattered across the surface of the desk. Freddy bent over them. “Who’s the lady with the bobbed hair? She’s in a lot of these pictures.”
Charlie looked over her shoulder. “Great-Aunty Violet. Our grandfather’s sister. The family black sheep. Of that generation, anyway.”
“Wow,” Freddy said. “Her brother had bondage statues in his strawberry patch and she was the family black sheep. A-plus for effort, Violet. Or did black-sheep behaviour in that generation mean she dressed in tweeds and joined the Women’s Institute?”
“She had the temerity to run off to be on the stage.” Charlie invested the word with all the old-school connotations of immorality. “And made a piss-poor job of it, by all accounts. The men in the family could have their fun but the women were expected to be good little girls. Our great-aunty had a habit of throwing drunken tantrums at village events, according to the old lady who used to run the sweet shop.”
Griff rolled his eyes. “Which probably means she had an extra glass of mulled wine at the Christmas fête one year and refused to join in the sing-a-long. Highbrook has a history of taking dull anecdotes and inflating them into secrets that would make Bluebeard feel comparatively virtuous.”
“Then she committed the ultimate blackening of the family name when she smashed her car into Tower Bridge and didn’t survive to pay the damages.” Charlie picked up the photo of the woman with the defiant face. “Poor Violet,” he said more soberly.
“She has sad eyes,” Freddy murmured.
“She was an unwanted daughter in a family that wanted another son, never had many friends, and invested everything into becoming an actor. And failed miserably at it.” Griff finished organising his new shots. “She lived a short, unfulfilled life, and when she died, I suspect it was considered an inconvenience rather than a loss.”
“God.” Appalled, Freddy took the photograph from Charlie. “She was an actor?”
“A minor member of the Wythburn Group.” Griff came to stand at her shoulder. “Very minor. I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of her. Most people have either forgotten she existed, or never knew her name in the first place.”
Freddy looked into Violet Ford’s unhappy eyes. “I hope you’re including her in your film. As a person, not a failure,” she added, with a burst of fierceness, twisting so she could see him.
He was studying her rather than the photo. She couldn’t read his expression at all now. “I am” was all he said.
After a moment, she turned and let her weight rest against him—and after another few breaths, she felt the stroke of his thumb against her forearm.
Chapter Seven
The worst thing about cell phones was that it was impossible to bang the receiver down on someone, a lack Sabrina was probably cursing right now. Hitting the End button really hard would just break a nail and potentially the screen. Freddy watched as the call timer stopped and her home screen reappeared. With a silent f-bomb herself, she returned the phone to her bag.
As expected, Sabrina and Ferren had progressed rapidly from “talking” to reigniting their disaster of a relationship. He’d shown up at Sabs’s flat with jewellery boxes and some rehearsed speech, and her otherwise smart sister had fallen for it.
Freddy’s own building stress, not aided by the fact that she still couldn’t keep her lines straight, had left her more tactless than usual, and Sabrina had not appreciated her candour.
Her sister had finally lost her temper completely and snapped, “When you’ve had a relationship that lasts longer than an orgasm, Fred, get back to me and I might take your advice.” And hung up. For a sophisticated thirty-year-old woman, who had a bad habit of still treating Freddy like a child, she could do a good impression of a door-slamming teenager.