The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(5)
Ford-Griffin, in all his towering, broad-shouldered, frosty glory, asked another bartender for two whisky-and-sodas before he looked back at her. His eyes were almost black, in stark contrast to the very pale hair, and his gaze moved coolly from the gin bottle to her face. “Nice catch. Thanks.”
“Not a problem.” Freddy gave her own order to the grey-haired bartender, then propped her elbow on the bar and studied him. She’d forgotten he had that nose. When he was doing his presenting work, the TV cameras didn’t usually film him in profile. She suspected he didn’t give a shit about his looks, but if impressions were deceptive and he spent a lot of time gazing into mirrors like his friend Davenport, he was probably grateful he had the strong jaw to balance it out. An unexpected little flutter in her stomach took her by surprise. An oxytocin hit from the walking ice cube. Interesting life choices, body. “Apparently I have an affinity with all sorts of small objects. Bottles. Safety scissors.”
His brain didn’t require even a second of internal whirring to catch on. A small glint appeared behind the emotionless observation. “If it helps, there’ll be no references to predictability in the next review.”
“Because I was completely rubbish tonight?”
“You weren’t completely rubbish.” Definite emphasis on that completely. He pulled the whisky-and-sodas towards him and waved his credit card over the sensor. “Comparatively, you made Adrian Blair look like he was performing in a school hall nativity.” He slipped the card back into his wallet and picked up the glasses. “With the exception of the meander into Springsteen.”
Freddy handed over a note for her own order and dropped the change into the tip jar. All the staff looked like they deserved a few drinks at the end of their shift. “I’ll look forward to reading the review.” She stuck a straw in her sangria. “Especially if you put in the part about Adrian’s teeth.”
He looked at her for a second and then over her head towards their respective booths. He lifted an eyebrow.
She cheers-ed him with Sabrina’s rum and coke. “Nice to meet the man behind the most entertaining reviews I’ve ever had.”
And the most discomfortingly perceptive.
Without looking back, she returned to her seat, where in the midst of Sabrina’s risqué anecdote and frequent hostile glances at the next booth, she tried to forget all about J. Ford-Griffin and his insidious commentary.
And his inkwell eyes.
Chapter Two
Six months later
When his brother grinned like that, he still looked like a little kid. Eager, hopelessly optimistic, effortlessly likeable, and on the verge of yet another half-cocked scheme. Charlie was all but bouncing in his seat. It didn’t bode well. He hadn’t looked this excited since his grand plan to save the estate by starting a hot-air ballooning enterprise on the north lawn.
Griff eyed him over the wide mahogany desk. He had a feeling that his day was about to get significantly worse. Tightening his grip on his phone, he turned away from Charlie’s impatient wriggling and tried to keep his full attention on the call. “Henrietta Carlton rose from bit player to reigning queen of the West End stage by the age of twenty-three. She caused havoc in nightclubs from Wimbledon to Whitechapel and had affairs with some of the most powerful people in London. And before her thirtieth birthday, she’d written one of the most iconic plays of the twentieth century and permanently altered the landscape of British drama.”
The studio executive at the end of the line made thoughtful noises, as if this was the first time she’d heard this pitch. Griff had delivered it three times this month alone. The process of securing funding for a film was long, frustrating, and repetitive. Investors were like police detectives interviewing suspects; they needed to hear the same story over and over before they made a decision.
The past eight years that he’d been working in television, he’d progressed from being just the figurehead they stuck in a suit and shoved in front of a camera, to having a small say in what was written on the script, to full production credits. The move from documentary production into film development was what he’d been working towards, and he’d long seen the screen potential in Henrietta Carlton’s chaotic life on and off the stage, and her propulsion into unexpected literary stardom.
“The script hinges on the time when Henrietta was writing The Velvet Room in the countryside, but a lot of scenes will be shot in London.”
Henrietta had written the play here at Highbrook, during the time she’d been heavily involved in an affair with Griff’s grandfather, Sir George Ford; but for the purposes of the film, her life in London also provided dramatic scope. She’d founded the Wythburn Group in the city, a collective of actors and writers who’d occupied neighbouring party houses in Marylebone, and their exploits were legendary.
The executive babbled another stream of questions that Griff had already answered, and he bit back impatience. As fed up as he was with the red tape, he needed this backing.
He couldn’t get this project off the ground without the financing, and he’d invested so much time and so many hopes into it that the prospect of failure was a kick to the gut. He could see it in his mind, what the story could be, and felt an intense frustration in not being able to immediately extract that image and cast it up onto the big screen.
And on a personal level, the film had the potential to make a healthy profit—and with Highbrook mortgaged to the roof tiles, Griff badly needed the cash infusion.