by Lucy Parker
Despite the drawled familiarity of his greeting, there was nothing actually lecherous in it. Ferren had many faults, but he wasn’t another Dylan. He exploited his sex appeal for his career, like most people in this industry, but he didn’t try to crack on with every woman he met. It was almost unfortunate—if he’d been just another fuckboy, Sabrina would have kicked him to the curb ages ago.
“If it isn’t little Frederica.” Typically unbothered by her attitude, he stretched in a casual, sensual motion. “How are you, pet?”
“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.
Violet’s penetrating gaze suddenly seemed accusatory.
You’re Henrietta’s granddaughter. And you know. You know, you know—
A muffled voice cut through Freddy’s spiralling anxiety, coming from outside in the hallway. “I think I saw her go this way, sir.”
Footsteps resounded through the floorboards, and the door opened.
She looked up and stared at the man who stood there. His greying hair was a profusion of wild curls, and the deeply carved creases in his forehead and cheeks, folding around his mouth, were the result of a youth as a heavy smoker and years of chronic pain, not a life spent laughing. The aging rocker appearance hid a wily business brain. He was making no effort, however, to hide the strong disapproval.
The butterflies in her stomach went into a whirlwind.
“Hello, Dad,” she said. “You’re back early.”
* * *
“Dad.” Griff was barely holding on to his temper. He could actually feel a nerve twitching in his eyebrow. They were going to drive him up the fucking wall. Of the fucking not-that-miniature castle behind him. “There is no money left in the trust. There is no money. The estate is barely scraping by. If The Austen Playbook broadcast is successful, our fee will keep the place afloat for another year. If my film about Henrietta Carlton gets the go-ahead from the studio, we’re good for another five years, and I hope by that time I’ll have enough coals in the fire to keep things up indefinitely. But right now, there’s barely enough to pay the utilities bill, let alone the mortgage. Let alone build a fucking amusement park in the front yard.”
“It’s not quite as ambitious as that, old chap,” James said, totally unperturbed, his words barely audible over the noise of the bloody crane he’d hired. “But I think the local children will like it.”
“The local—” Griff had to bite back any further words. He had just watched the second construction crew on the property install a gold-plated brick walkway in front of a “toy” castle the size of a van. He hadn’t seen the bills yet, but to have a return on a proje
ct like this, they’d need half the kids in the county to traipse out to play with it, and would have to charge their parents twenty quid a pop at the gate.
Charlie appeared at his side then, looking uncharacteristically serious. “Uh. Griff. One of the Austen team wants a word.”
The manager in charge of the theatre restoration pushed past him. “Look, I don’t want to interrupt,” she said brusquely, “but are you aware that a delivery lorry is stacking materials for these...dolls outside the theatre? The production will be broadcasting live shots of The Henry exterior before the performance, and it’s not a good look having a load of crates propping up the walls.”
“For Christ’s sake.” Griff turned to his mother, who shook her head at him with a shade of exasperation that raised his hackles even higher.
Between his family’s never-ending series of bad decisions, and the advent of Freddy, this summer was seriously undermining his belief in his own temperament. He’d be stomping about throwing dramatics like the West End contingent soon.
“James, honestly. Since when have you been such a fusser? We just need temporary shelter in case the weather packs in again, and the south pillars of the theatre have a nice outward reach. We’ll have everything installed by the end of the week, out of the way well before these people have their performance.”
Griff’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he had a sudden sense of foreboding. He’d never put any credence in premonition; obviously the fantasyland around him, with all its little bubbling cauldrons and lurking dragons, was having a bad effect.
Regardless, and equally irrationally since she was just through the trees at rehearsal—and nobody was likely to call him about her in any case; he wasn’t her emergency contact—his first thought was Freddy, that she was hurt again. His hand flexing around the phone, he checked the screen, ignoring the continued hum of arguing voices around him.
Not Freddy. The agent who was acting for his company in negotiations with the film studio.
He slid his thumb over the screen. “Nissa.”
He’d hired her because she dispersed with tedious preliminaries and small talk, and got straight to the point. “Griff. Bad news, I’m afraid.”
* * *
Rupert didn’t beat about the bush. The end of his walking stick tapping against the floorboards, he made an absent-minded return of Freddy’s kiss on his cheek, then levelled her with his managerial look again. “Did we, or did we not, agree that this project was unsuitable for the current path we’re on? This part wouldn’t have stretched your ability when you were fourteen. As your manager, Freddy, I’d appreciate being kept informed of your professional decisions if I’m out of the country, not having them dropped into conversation by your sister.”
“For the path I’m on, Dad.” Freddy couldn’t help stressing his alternative, some might say more important title. “I wanted to do this play, and it came at the right time for me. I needed a break from London to get my head together going forward.”
Which seemed laughable, in light of everything that had happened in the sleepy old country in just a few days—including the possible upheaval of her entire future life.
“We scheduled a holiday for you in November, before the Christmas season.” Rupert studied her with a shade of apprehension, as if he expected her to suddenly drop to the floor and cancel all future bookings.
“And I’m still taking my four days in Paris,” Freddy said emphatically. “But I just did back-to-back performances in emotionally draining roles, and I wanted a few laughs and a bit of romance.”
She’d meant scripted romance, but it was an unfortunate choice of words. Rupert’s brows and teeth snapped together. “Yes. I just ran into that vile Sadie Foster, who informed me that you’re zoning out in rehearsals over James Ford-Griffin.” The derision was dripping.
A pleasure as always, Sadie. What a winning delight of a human being.
That unprecedented urge rose in Freddy again, to defend and protect a man who’d probably never needed—or more to the point, accepted—help from anyone in his life. She wasn’t going to dismiss him even verbally, even to avoid the looming argument. “I am seeing Griff.” Well, she supposed she was. They hadn’t really gone into that point. They’d been too busy having sex and reading other people’s letters. And when she told him about the suspicions bubbling in her mind—and if she couldn’t find something to disprove the picture that was coming together, she’d have to tell him—she didn’t know what would happen. “But—”
“How charming,” Rupert said, with a strong edge of sarcasm. “Over dinner he can read you excerpts of the ridiculous reviews he’s written.”
“Oh, come on, Dad. That’s his job. One of his jobs. And for the most part, those reviews were dead-on. Maybe not tactful—” the understatement of the year “—but that’s partly effect for the paper. Nobody wants to read a boring review any more than they want to see a boring show.” It was also just Griff’s personality, but she didn’t feel it necessary to add that.
Rupert didn’t even seem to be listening to her. Big surprise. “A Carlton and a Ford. It’s like history bloody repeating itself.” Her father’s walking stick scraped along the floor. “You’ve read All Her World. You know how hard it is to get to the top. You need to stay focused, keep in your mind in the game and your eye on the goal.”
Most of the lecture drifted into the dust around them. Freddy’s brain had zeroed in on just three words of it. The biography. Oh, fuck. Fuck. She hadn’t even thought as far as that. Please let me be wrong about this. Please let it be that I really am just too influenced by the play right now. Please. “Is it true you’re planning to adapt the book into a screen version? You’ve never mentioned it.”
“There are plans in the pipeline. I didn’t want to say anything until they were concrete.” Her father scowled so hard that creases developed creases, and he ended up looking a bit like the Grinch. “And then that obnoxious bastard you’re fawning over announced this mockery of a film he’s making and threw a spanner in the works.”
Freddy found that she was compulsively smoothing her hair back behind her ears. She stopped and pressed her hands against her thighs. “He’s uncovering a lot of new research on Henrietta—”
“He doesn’t know anything about your grandmother!” Rupert seemed to realise how sharp his voice had become, and made a visible effort to ease the atmosphere down. “Anyway, that’s no longer an issue of concern. Let’s concentrate on you in the meantime.” He looked about them. “Christ. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this room.”
“This is where she wrote The Velvet Room, isn’t it? That summer?”
“Yes.” Rupert’s gaze ran over the huge oak desk, which was now battered around the legs and had picked up the scratches of dozens of different pens over the years; then past it, to the bookshelves, and the tiled feature wall. “This is where it was written.”
He went silent, his eyes unfocused, his mind obviously back in the days of another summer, over fifty years ago.
Then suddenly, with a renewed surge of determination, he turned to Freddy. “It’s obviously too late to pull out of this play now. It would be far worse for your future prospects if you gain a reputation for being unreliable. Fortunately, it’s a short rehearsal period and just the one performance. We’ll just have to hope this live broadcast goes without a hitch, and then we can put our full focus on the new production of The Velvet Room. I hope you’ve arranged for time off next week to come back to London for the first audition.”
There was no “hope” in his voice, just pure expectation.
Freddy pulled her own gaze from the infamous writing desk. “I’m not sure I want to do it.” Still hedging, but it was the first time she’d ever just come out and said that to Rupert’s face.
In the seconds that followed, she could hear the tick of the clock.
“Of course you want to do it.”
After the initial surprise, Rupert waved her words aside, as easily dismissive as if she were still a teenager with no idea what she was doing, just going where she was told and reading the lines she was given, and enjoying herself wholeheartedly.
Freddy would still like to enjoy herself wholeheartedly—what the hell was the point, otherwise—but she’d grown out of the rest of that mindset a long time ago.
Even now, a little voice in her head was whispering that it would be easier to just do the audition, do the play, make her father proud, avoid the confrontation. And bury what she thought might be the truth, before it could bring a lot of things toppling down.
But there was another voice, a conscience voice. A self-respect voice that had taken too many blows over the past few years.
“I enjoy musical theatre, Dad,” she said quietly. “I like rom-coms, and physical comedy, and all of these so-called frivolous scripts. Giving people a good time, making them happy, letting them escape for a while—that’s what I think is worthwhile. I don’t really care about being seen as a ‘serious’ actor. I don’t even care if people know my name, as long as they leave the theatre feeling better than when they came in.”
A muscle jumped in Rupert’s jaw. “Well, regardless of whether you ‘want’ people to know your name, you have a name to uphold. Our family has been in the West End for over four hundred years—”
“Yes. I know they have. I love the theatre, and I’m really proud to be part of a family that’s had such an impact on the way the dramatic arts have developed in London.” Freddy’s voice faltered. “You know I always wanted to be like Henrietta.”
“And you are,” Rupert said at once, with a shade more warmth. “You’ve worked so hard, and your career is developing brilliantly. Your grandmother would have been very proud.”