The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(39)

“I just thought I heard a family resemblance for a second,” Freddy said innocently, and caught Griff’s expressive sidelong look. “This is where Henrietta and George met?”

“Yes,” Wanda said. “I did inadvertently set that in motion. I hosted a party here one weekend, and a friend of mine brought along Henrietta and several members of that crowd she ran about with. The deviants and has-beens of Marylebone.”

“I think they preferred the term Wythburn Group.” Griff’s insertion was mild.

Wanda’s opinion of that was a snort. “Wythburn Group. They weren’t investment bankers. They were so-called ‘creatives’ of varying ability, mostly using the group as a cover for their drunken escapades and bedroom shenanigans. I’m sure your film will be an enormous success. From what I see on television these days, that’s all people are interested in. Sex and selfishness and blethering on about nothing.”

Griff was starting to look a tiny bit peeved. Freddy was suddenly having a great time.

Grinning, she said, “I hope Henrietta and her friends didn’t turn your party into a rave?”

Honestly, she’d been born in the wrong era. The contemporary club scene had nothing on what her grandma had got up to after performances.

“Certainly not,” Wanda said, offended. “Although Henrietta did her best to stay in the spotlight all weekend. That girl ruled the roost. Everyone jumped to her bidding.” She nodded at Griff. “I’d invited your grandfather’s poor sister to the party. Sad, moping creature. My mother used to feel sorry for her. Suggested we include her on the guest list. Her family seemed grateful. Unfortunately, they didn’t foresee that she’d meet Henrietta and become infatuated with the idea of the stage.”

Henrietta, the idol of all aspiring actors.

“And that pompous twit George drove his sister here, took one look at that attention-seeking vamp, and the rest was—” Wanda lifted her hands meaningfully.

“History,” Freddy finished.

“Appalling,” Wanda corrected, pinching her lips together.

“Do you remember Violet Ford well?” Freddy asked. She knew Griff was more concerned with Henrietta and George’s affair, but the memory of his great-aunt’s face was very clear in her mind. Her eyes were haunting. If Freddy and Henrietta had deceptively innocent eyes, Violet’s were a mirror of the most immense pain. Even in the fading photos, it was evident.

“Oh, yes.” Wanda didn’t sound especially interested. Nobody seemed to have been especially interested in Violet. “She was often here for weekends after that, while the army training camp was posted nearby. Her young man used to come here to see her. From what I remember of your great-grandparents,” she said to Griff, “I doubt if they would have had him in the house, had they known about him.”

Griff had been doing a silent watching job, letting the talk flow around him, so he could piece out any information that might be useful. It was a skill Freddy had never mastered. At that, however, he frowned. “Her young man?”

“The chap she met abroad. Antibes? Portugal?” Wanda dismissed the matter with a shrug. “He later joined the army and they met again down here that weekend, by chance. I can’t imagine Henrietta and George knew much about it, then or later. They’d have tattled straight to her parents. Expected everyone to turn a blind eye to their own indiscretions, even though they flaunted it across the county by building that conceit of a theatre, but had no problem gossiping about their fellows. They looked good together, I thought, Violet and her young man.” Her tone was surprisingly tolerant, after her sharp criticism of everyone in the tale. “Pity about his family. The letters they wrote were rather lovely.”

She seemed to take in their blank expressions. “I read them,” she said matter-of-factly. “Violet asked if she could hide them here for safekeeping, and I found them in the old nursery after she passed. That was tragic. But she was always a reckless driver. Her family took her car off her twice because of earlier prangs, and they should have held on to it.”

Freddy looked at Griff. “Did you know she had an unsuitable boyfriend?”

“No. My father remembered there being concern about the people she’d be mixing with in the theatre, but no specific name ever came up in relation to her. It was George who produced the undesirable lover.” There was a glint in Griff’s eyes, and Freddy lifted her brows at him.

“These shameless Carlton actresses, exercising their wiles on the poor, unsuspecting Ford nobs.”

“Why do I suspect from your tone that there was a silent ‘k’ on that last word?”

Wanda gave them a tour of the property, becoming chattier with each dusty room they passed through and each overgrown garden they politely admired. By the time they ended back up in the room that had once been a nursery, Freddy felt she could take a decent stab at following in her father’s footsteps and writing the other woman’s biography, in minute detail, down to her current favourite supper. Sturgeon and peas.

She finally left them alone with a pile of old boxes and mementos related to the Wythburn Group, after Griff managed to manoeuvre her out of the room.

“Christ,” he muttered, pulling a photo album from one of the boxes. “Does that woman’s mouth ever stop moving? I’m surprised the butler hasn’t thrown her out of the turret.”