The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(68)
“No.” Griff’s palm was warm against her neck and ear. He pulled her into him and rested his cheek against hers. “Understandable.”
She tucked her fingers around his wrist. “I feel like I should be apologising to you. To your family. On behalf of mine.”
“What happened in the past has nothing to do with us.” Firm and decisive words, but—
“That’s not true, though, is it?” Freddy pulled his arm down so she could twist to look at him. “What happened then is going to directly impact what happens now. To start with, it’s probably going to be a legal nightmare. There’s a lot of royalty money involved that’s been directed to the wrong estate. It’ll take years to sort out that mess.” She hesitated. “And there’s your film.”
Griff had one of the sharpest minds she’d ever encountered. He would have seen the new door that had just opened, the moment he’d realised what he was holding as he crouched by his grandfather’s hidden chest.
When the facts were made public, it would be a literary scandal. This was a text that was studied for university entrance exams. It made an absolute fortune in performance royalties and West End ticket sales. And it had been stolen. The observations and hopes and despair and love of the most invisible member of the Wythburn Group, ripped away and presented as coming from the brain and heart of the tabloids’ favourite actress. The secret hidden for decades. An extramarital affair on one side. Heartbroken true lovers on the other.
A man once considered to be an unsuitable match, who’d gone on to become society’s pet painter. That was tragic, that Violet had died so soon after she’d found Billy again. The letters made it clear that she wouldn’t have let the fear of her family’s disdain dissuade her away from him this time. And in the end, it would have resolved itself anyway. Presumably, even Griff’s stodgy great-grandparents would have found the newly wealthy William Gotham eligible. It was such a waste.
And it was cinematic gold.
The entertainment business moved quickly; it struck while public fervour was at a peak. Griff’s film was already far advanced in preproduction. Even with the new angle, he had it ready and waiting for a studio to snap up. Her father could do nothing to prevent it. His own project—and his treasured, critically acclaimed biography—had just been rendered obsolete.
Freddy was fairly sure that any support she gave to the Ford-Griffins from here on out would be the final straw where her relationship with her dad was concerned.
“This will change things where the studio is concerned. Won’t it?”
“Yes, I expect it will.” He wore a strange, preoccupied expression as he looked down into her face, a small frown etched between his brows.
Freddy took a deep breath and released it shakily. “I’m glad.” Her voice was husky. “I’ll be so glad if you can keep Highbrook. And you’ll give Violet the recognition she should have had. You’ll give her back her voice. One side of this is such a relief.”
The other side was shattering.
“I thought about saying nothing.” The words blurted out, and she couldn’t look at him. “I saw my father stumble in Henrietta’s office, and he looked so old and in so much pain, but so proud, and I couldn’t bear it. The thought of having to tell him.” She felt Griff make an abrupt, abbreviated movement at her side, and looked up, her misery and shame probably evident in her eyes. “I thought about keeping it buried. Which would have been so utterly wrong. I’m so sorry.”
That weird look remained on Griff’s face, but he didn’t hesitate. His arms came around her and he pressed his mouth to her temple. “Freddy. Believe me, I understand the impulse to protect family.” An indecipherable note to the words. “Don’t look like that. I understand.”
A muscle in her back was still twitching, and she moved her shoulder restlessly. Griff pushed up her top, his hand stroking, warm and strong, up her spine, and started kneading at the rock-hard tension there. It occurred to her how far they’d come in many ways, that he would even initiate this sort of intimacy. It was so good that, as the judders of emotion slowly soothed into stillness, Freddy felt herself start to go boneless, her weight sinking into him.
She could hear the light sound of his breathing in the otherwise quiet room. Without sitting up, she stretched out a hand, carefully pushed Violet’s painstaking work into a pile and set it aside, then twisted against his body to circle his neck with her arms.
A different sort of shiver racked her. It was a good thing her massage therapist in London didn’t have this effect on her. It seemed like, no matter what else was going on, the moment Griff touched her she felt it as a warm, almost narcotic glow in her stomach, edged with the fluttering of arousal. If she were a man, she’d soon be in danger of waving a giant flag that she was really, really enjoying the backrub. One of the many perks of being a woman. Willies were fun to play with, but occasionally they just seemed inconvenient. And kind of odd-looking.
She liked Griff’s, though, and she had a feeling it might be equally affected by the touching. He was breathing deeper.
However, his mind, like hers, was still weighted by the underlying situation and the day’s revelation. “It’s fairly obvious Henrietta didn’t pull this off by herself. At least after the fact.”
Freddy rubbed her cheek on his shirt, an instinctive seeking of comfort, and her breath hitched when she felt the press of Griff’s lips against her shoulder. His mouth moved there for a few seconds, not sexually, just gently. It was as if he’d read her mind, sensed her need. “Your grandfather helped her. Hid the evidence.” She shifted as he resumed the slow rubbing, pressing his thumbs in circles over her tight muscles. “And went to quite an extreme to do it. There was basically no chance anyone was going to find Violet’s drafts while he or Henrietta were still alive. Do you think he plastered over the wall with saucy tiles as a sort of double bluff? Like, everyone would look at the wall, but you’d be too distracted to even think of looking beyond the wall.”