The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(80)

His mind whited out as the pressure broke and spilled over, his nerve endings seeming to spark through his entire body. A rough sound broke from his throat, and he closed his eyes as Freddy held him close.

When he was confident enough in the stability of his arms and legs to lift his head and straighten, she adjusted the grip of her thighs over his hips, and slowly touched a finger to the centre of his chin.

He was expecting a light, cheeky comment, but her voice was solemn. “Thank you for making this week bearable for me.”

His eyes searched hers, then he tucked her face back into the curve of his neck, sheltering her body with his own.

As they got dressed in the bedroom, Freddy’s fingers flew as she buttoned up her dress. She was due at the theatre soon. Instead of encouraging the cast to chill out in the hours leading up to opening night, Maf Reynolds was still drilling cues into them for the different scene sequences, and her roaring had echoed around the estate this week when anyone was late. She was clearly worried about how the performance was going to come off.

“Griff.” He glanced up at the alteration in Freddy’s tone. A certain tension had slipped back into the set of her shoulders, and he assumed the subject in her mind had something to do with her grandmother. Even decades later, the bloody woman was still causing strife. “You’ve studied art history. What do you know about Billy Gotham?”

“Not a lot.” He tucked his shirt into his trousers and did up his belt. “Twentieth-century portraiture isn’t my area. He had a successful showing in a Royal Academy summer exhibition, attracted the notice of an influential patron, and his career took off from there. He was one of the pet society artists. And obviously became wealthy, because the boy who was born in one of the poorest streets in the East End eventually died in a home he owned in Knightsbridge.”

“Alone?” Freddy asked, winding her hair into a coil on top of her head. “He never married?”

“No.” Griff propped his hip against the desk. “He never married.”

“Because he was still in love with Violet.”

“Conjecture,” Griff pointed out, and she wrinkled her nose at him. “But possibly, yes.”

Not so long ago, he’d have sneered at any possibility that romantic love could be so enduring, so life-altering as that.

It no longer seemed like a notion that belonged only in fiction.

Freddy reached up to kiss him. Her mint-scented breath had just touched his skin when someone knocked on the door. She froze. “Why do I suddenly have an apprehensive feeling?”

“Because you have an overactive imagination that’s proving to be contagious, and it would be best for all concerned if you put a line through whodunits on your list of future projects.” He pulled open the door just as she threw a pillow at his head.

“Ahoy there, young lovers.” Charlie was wearing his usual smile, but there was wariness behind it. “Sorry to break up the party,” he said with a quirked brow at the pillow. “But I need a word, Griff.”

Griff stepped back to let him in, but Charlie cast a glance at Freddy. “Er...in private. No offense intended, Freddy.”

“None taken. I have to get to the theatre.” Freddy went up on her tiptoes and kissed Griff’s cheek, her hand resting on the crook of his arm.

She shot him a smile as she went out, transparently pleased to see him and Charlie advancing to the stage of brotherly heart-to-hearts.

Unfortunately, he suspected that wasn’t why his brother was here.

Once Freddy was out of earshot, he turned with raised eyebrows.

“Rupert Carlton has arrived,” Charlie said. “He’s waiting for you in the library.”

He clenched his jaw. “Right.”

“It’ll work out,” Charlie said, and Griff looked at him.

“That blind optimism again?”

Charlie shook his head. “That faith again.”

On the first landing, they passed Sadie Foster leaning against the wall and cooing into her phone. She looked as innocent and sweet as a chocolate-box painting until her eyes lifted. She sneered at them as she continued to pour honeyed bullshit into some gullible sod’s ear.

“God, she’s a piece of work,” Charlie muttered, and Griff glanced back at her.

She was watching them with narrowed eyes, her body language shrewd and assessing. As his cool gaze met hers, she raised her chin with clear disdain.

Downstairs, Griff paused with his hand on the library door. Charlie dropped back a few paces, a supportive presence at his back, but giving him space. An instant of silent communication passed between them, before Charlie formed a fist with his right hand and pressed it over his heart.

It was a gesture he hadn’t made for years. Griff had last seen him do it when he’d been a skinny kid, standing on the paved steps leading up to his boarding school, watching Griff drive away after his visit to the headmaster’s office. Griff had been eighteen then, heading into London on a mission to find enough money to pay Charlie’s school fees, with no plan in mind, but a kid behind him who believed he could make anything right.

His chest momentarily tight, Griff opened the door. Rupert Carlton was standing very still in a slice of sunlight from the window, leaning on his walking stick, looking down at the Wythburn Group materials Griff had left scattered across his desk.

The older man lifted his head. Lines around his eyes spoke of physical pain and sleepless nights.