The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(50)

“Not happy you’re here, actually.” She lowered her voice in the hope he’d follow suit. People were casting them curious glances, and Sadie was watching them. Maf snapped something and Sadie returned to character, but Freddy hadn’t missed that temporary transformation of Emma Woodhouse from meddling snobbery to catlike malevolence. “Definitely not happy that you’re back in Sabrina’s life, or really within ten thousand miles of England, and I can’t imagine you’re all that stoked to be working with me, either.”

Ferren ran a hand over his head. Like Sabrina, he was a natural redhead, and the two of them were a fiery, temperamental cliché. Sabrina, however, didn’t bring her quick temper into the workplace and go flying off the rails at the most minor setback.

Freddy could not, in any way, see him as an appropriate casting for Knightley, but he did have marketing pull and it was all about the pounds and pence. He was a risky proposition to have in a live broadcast. She hoped the management team knew what they were doing.

“I did have an inkling you were going to be difficult.” Ferren dug in his pocket and slipped a cigarette between his lips. “But I found myself with an unexpected window in my schedule and to be brutally frank, I could do with the cash.”

“Another bad weekend in Monte Carlo, was it? What happened to steering clear of the roulette wheel?”

“Lady Luck is typical of your sex. Fickle. But so very—” he winked at her, but again there was no real emotion behind the gesture; it was just a practiced routine, part of his image “—seductive.”

Freddy looked back at him, unimpressed, and a small smile replaced the slick lady’s man act.

“You never did let me get away with shit, did you, Fred? Even when you were just a kid, you didn’t hold back when you thought I was being a dick.”

“I notice it never stopped you.”

“What can I say? I’m my own worst enemy.”

Maf called his name from the stage, and he booped the end of Freddy’s nose and sauntered off to answer the summons.

Freddy shook her head. That was the danger of Ferren. Every so often, he gave the impression of being disarmingly candid—and it went straight out the window the moment life got a little difficult, or a little dull, or someone landed a direct hit on his ego.

The scene change was called and she went to take up her position on the stage. When she reached the head of the stairs and passed under the artificial glow of the lights, Sadie grabbed her arm.

“A little word of advice, Frederica,” she said sweetly. “I know it’s your habit to be friendly during productions, but keep your calculating little eyes on that bastard Ford-Griffin, and steer clear of Ferren.”

Had she just been called “calculating” by Sadie Foster? It was like being accused of eccentricity by Willy Wonka. Bloody cheek. “I would be quite happy to keep an entire continent between me and Ferren, but I think you’ll find I’m not the Carlton sister who’s in your way.”

“Sabrina never holds his attention for long,” Sadie said dismissively, and narrowly avoided having one of her own fake nails jammed into a vital artery.

Sadie could taunt Freddy as much as she liked. Just try coming after her sister.

“And have you managed to hold his attention at all?” She dropped to Sadie’s own purring level for once, and was rewarded with another flash of deep malice.

Sadie tightened her grip on Freddy’s wrist and pulled her closer. “Stay out of my path, or you might find I become a bit chattier around here. You never know what things can slip off your tongue.”

Sadie returned to her place and resumed her scenes with Maya, who cast a concerned glance in Freddy’s direction. Rubbing her arm, where the imprints of Sadie’s talons were light pink crescents, Freddy made a little bit of worry space in her increasingly crowded brain to wonder again what Sadie thought she had on her.

She phoned it in during the morning rehearsal. Her mind seemed to be on a hundred things that had nothing to do with the play, and it didn’t go unnoticed.

“You’ve got one hour and then I want you back here for the ballroom scene,” Maf said when most of the cast broke to rehydrate and raid the biscuit table. “Correction. I want Lydia back here. You can leave Freddy in your room for the rest of the day.” Briefly, she looked Freddy up and down. “A different outfit mightn’t go amiss either. Long night, obviously.”

Rubbing a hand over her forehead, Freddy collected her bag from the stands, intending to go straight to her room and change her dress, but in the hallway she hesitated. Then she switched directions and followed the winding corridor until the walls started to peel and the smell of dust appeared, and she left the tarted-up public part of the theatre behind.

Henrietta’s office was empty, but Griff’s research materials were still stacked neatly on the infamous desk where The Velvet Room had been born. Freddy’s footsteps sounded loud in the quiet as she walked over and picked up the portrait photograph of Violet Ford. Brushing the residual dust from the surface, she looked down into those intense eyes.

She’d hoped that in the light of day, her wild thoughts yesterday would just seem ridiculous. Instead, the more she turned it over in her mind—the letters, The Velvet Room, Violet, Henrietta, Billy, and George—words and phrases connected like lines in a join-the-dots picture...and an ugly image was taking shape.