The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(97)

Still feeling as if she were existing in a surreal bubble, she read the relief in Dylan’s body language and saw the flood of adrenaline return to Maya, and the energy underlying the dialogue surged.

The last twenty minutes of the play seemed to pass in a blink, as Lydia was unmasked as the murderer, and Anne Elliot proved the hero of the day, and Elizabeth and Darcy locked themselves into a passionate embrace.

They finished to a standing ovation that Freddy suspected was partly secondhand relief on the audience’s part. She didn’t see how anyone could have missed that momentary hitch, and it was agony to sit through the pause of an amnesiac actor.

But with the exception of those few fraught seconds—

“Overall,” Dylan murmured at her side under cover of the applause, “not bloody bad. Nicely done, comrade. You’re a trooper.”

He kissed her hand, and in the audience she saw Griff lift a brow where he stood, on his feet near an inscrutable Fiona Gallagher, whom Freddy had been trying not to notice all night.

When the curtain lowered for the final time, and the “live” sign flickered off, returning Highbrook to relative privacy, away from the scrutiny of the British public, Freddy looked at Maya in silence.

Her co-star’s mouth quivered, and Freddy reached out and hugged her hard.

Neither of them said anything.

Dylan placed a hand on Maya’s shoulder as they walked into the wings, and for once, there wasn’t one iota of lechery or flirtation in the gesture.

A lot of people really had grown a great deal in a few short weeks this summer.

The Highbrook effect, apparently.

In Freddy’s case, she’d arrived in turmoil over her career and her relationship with her father, and her personal life had been centred on a few casual hook-ups and some mug-painting. She was returning to London fathoms deep in love. With the overly perceptive dickhead from the pub.

The dice was still rolling where her career and her dad were concerned.

Still shaking from the build-up of adrenaline, Freddy rushed through the routine backstage—stripping off her bonnet and gown in her dressing room, and doing her last costume change of the night into a black dress and heels. She left her hair and makeup as they were. She wasn’t slathered with an inch-thick layer of greasepaint for once, and Leo had done a stellar job of giving her some cheekbones.

She went outside by the back door to avoid getting crushed in the throngs, and around to join the crowd out front.

Griff had agreed to let the production team hold the wrap party in the function room at the main house—for a large fee, she expected—and most people were heading for the path through the trees, which had been lit up with fairy lights tonight.

She saw him through the crowd, talking to Sabrina, who was pale but composed in the sparkle of moonlight and spotlight. Akiko and Elise were nearby, being chatted up by Dylan. There was still no sign of Ferren, the bloody rat.

Griff looked up and saw her, and even from a distance, across the heads of several dozen people, she saw the look that came into his eyes. She pressed her hands to her stomach.

“Freddy.” A very familiar voice, with a very unfamiliar note in it.

Dragging her eyes from Griff’s, she turned to face her father. “Dad.” Rupert was standing at a slight angle, resting his weight on his hand, and purplish smudges cast shadows beneath his eyes. She had to stop herself from reaching out to offer a supporting arm; he wouldn’t appreciate the reminder of his physical limitations.

“You did very well,” he said suddenly. “Tonight.”

“I almost lost it up there.” It was habit to recount her own weaknesses. He’d always expected her to be a solid self-critic. However good she was, she could always be better.

“But you didn’t.” He was holding himself very stiffly, but he didn’t look away from her. “I was very proud of you.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “Were you?”

A small smile moved his mouth, but an odd sadness flattened the expression in his eyes. “Very.”

She did put out her hand then, hesitantly, her fingers fluttering in the night air, the moonlight glittering off the crystal ring on her pinky finger. It had been her mother’s. Her father had given it to her for her eighteenth birthday. With any of the other people she loved, she would take their hand, but—“You pulled me through that glitch.” She blinked away wetness from her lashes, and in her peripheral vision she saw Griff moving towards her. He’d obviously been trying to give them space, but apparently he’d reached his limit. He was firing off protective vibes now. “I felt like you were willing confidence back into me.”

Rupert was looking down at her hand, where she’d reached for him and held herself back. “I was,” he said, almost harshly.

She opened her mouth, but didn’t get the chance to say the words that bubbled up.

What happened next was so quick and so surreal that Freddy experienced it in a series of fractured stills, like a montage of photographs in a film sequence. Even afterwards, bizarrely, her memories were all in black and white.

She heard shouting and the roar of an engine, and then swerving headlights cut through the night, zigzagging back and forth so rapidly that they created a long line of light, like a child’s sparkler writing patterns in the air. The out-of-control car managed to turn, and then spun wildly again, and skidded straight towards them. It was as if she was watching a toy that someone had picked up and flung.