The Austen Playbook

by Lucy Parker

  With a cry, she turned abruptly into him, dislodging his hand when the tension broke in pulsing waves. Breathing as heavily as she was, Griff drew her in against his chest, his hand wrapping around her head protectively. She lay half on top of him, panting a little, her fingers clenched on the muscles of his stomach.

  It had started to rain again outside, and the sound of the water hitting the roof and the balcony tiles created the most intense feeling of intimacy. She was acutely aware of even the tiniest move he made, his hands mapping the shape of her head, the length of her arm, playing with her fingers. His legs moving just a little restlessly against the covers. In these moments, just for them, there was nothing else in the world but this room. This was the world. Her world.

  Freddy stroked his skin, feeling the prickle of hair, damp with sweat. Rubbing her cheek against his flat nipple, she turned her head and caught it in her mouth, and his fingers clenched in her hair. She smiled against the taut bud, and the quiet noise she made sounded an awful lot like a purr. His chest was much more sensitive than hers. Useful to know.

  She sucked a little harder, and Griff made a sound of his own, throaty and growly. It was getting very feline in here, and Freddy loved it. With a renewed burst of energy, she sat up and swung her leg over his hips to straddle him. Reaching down to cup his head between her hands, she kissed him, hot, wild, wet, while her hips rotated and rubbed against the erection that strained his trousers.

  “Fuck.” Griff took hold of her waist and pulled her harder into him, guiding her movements into the rhythm he needed. The slashes of red in his cheeks had spread down his neck, and his breaths were coming out jagged and deep.

  Bracing his heels, he pushed his pelvis up into her, and the intense friction started to build again. No way. She’d never, not this close together...

  Her hands fisted on the mattress on either side of his head, Freddy pressed her forehead into his, their eyes locked together as she rocked harder, faster, almost desperately. Their mouths came back together in a clash of tongues and teeth and gasping air, and her thighs clamped down on his sides compulsively as the tension broke again.

  Holyshitholyshit...

  She was still trembling violently, hands, arms, legs, when his head jerked back and his jaw clenched. In the most dexterous movement Freddy had managed since the day at the pub in London when she’d caught a bottle before it could smash on him, she turned, unzipped him, and closed her mouth over the tip of his erection, wrapping her fist around him, seconds before he arched with a guttural groan.

  They stayed like that until the deep, irregular expansion of Griff’s ribs slowed back to a normal rhythm. The tautness seemed to drain out of his muscles, his tall frame going lax.

  “God. Freddy.” Her name so wreathed with feeling, his voice so rough, it was barely audible. His fingers were unsteady as they stroked over her head, threading through her hair, and gently, carefully, Freddy drew him from her mouth with a final light stroke of her thumb over the sensitive skin at the crease of his hairy thigh. He seemed to shudder with a last wave of compulsive pleasure.

  Touching her fingers to her lips, she moved back to curl against him, and was immediately pulled into a tight hold. She cuddled close into the sheltering warmth of his arms, the sweat on her body cooling in the slightly chilly air. Highbrook had very efficient ventilation in summer, largely due to various cracks and holes in the walls, Freddy suspected, but it must be freezing in winter.

  She might get the chance to find out, now.

  She stroked Griff’s chest, her gaze moving from where her fingers brushed across his body hair up to his face. He was watching her intently, still holding her, his forehead and hairline damp.

  Post-orgasm lethargy had been replaced by obvious concern; she could see it in his dark eyes as he touched the back of a knuckle lightly to her cheek. Their faces were close enough that she felt the fan of his breath on her nose.

  “What did you mean earlier about Sadie?” he asked unexpectedly, his voice deep and low in the lingering intimacy of the room. It still felt somehow hushed in here, significant and almost—reverent. “What’s she done? Besides demonstrate every deficiency in her character on a daily basis.”

  At that question, the chill on Freddy’s skin seemed to prickle, and she shivered. Griff rubbed his hand along her arm and stretched out for the blanket they’d knocked askew, where it lay draped at the end of the bed. Shaking it out, he tucked it around her.

  “Thank you.” Freddy pulled the super-soft wool under her chin. It was like a comforting hug—although not as comforting as the actual hug she got when Griff tugged her back into his arms. “It was...” She swallowed, and sensed his head turn down towards hers.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you’d rather not,” he said quietly against her temple, and she reached up and twisted her hand into his.

  “It seems she’s been making a habit on this production of storing up damaging information about people. I don’t know what she was holding over Greg Stirling, but she got him out to make room for Ferren, just because she fancies him.”

  “Charming girl,” Griff said, in an inadvertent reiteration of his brother’s opinion. Despite the mildness of his remark, multiple muscles went rigid against her, and he pulled the blanket back to see her face properly. “Is that little viper blackmailing you?”

  From his expression, Sadie would live to regret it.

  “It’s not really cause for blackmail in my case. If she blabbed my dirty little secret all over London, it would be a five-minute scandal. After all, apparently it happens all the time in this industry.” The hard edge to her words was so unlike her usual tone of speaking that she thought it shocked them both a bit.

  Griff stroked her cheek, never looking away from her face.

  “She’s just been enjoying making little digs here and there. It’s far more up her street than out-and-out blackmail, actually. I bet you a hundred quid that when she was little she was one of those nasty little shits who throw stones at cats.” Freddy had to drop her gaze then. She didn’t look at him when she said, “She worked with Drew Townseville recently.”

  “Another person who should be ostracised from the business for being a twat.”

  Freddy huffed out a brief, startled laugh. “Yes. He was the artistic director when I performed in High Voltage a few years back.”

  “The weakest performance of your career.” The comforting thumb rubbing on her cheekbone was followed up by the theatre critic in typically blunt form. Actually, there was something perversely comforting about that, too. If he’d starting waxing poetical because of an orgasm, she’d suddenly be in bed with a stranger.

  And on that note...

  “Yes.” She was compulsively playing with the dusting of hair on his chest. Petting the jaguar. He’d gone all watchful again. “It was the turning point. My first high-profile drama. My big move out of the child roles in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Addams Family and the rest, and into Serious Theatre.” She invested the phrase with full, sarcastic capitals, but her voice was hardening again. “I was eighteen. My dad was bursting with plans for my career, and the agent I had at the time was pushing as well. There was so much pressure. And I was so young then.”

  In actual years, she wasn’t exactly on the brink of picking up a pension now, either, but that wasn’t what she meant, and she thought Griff knew that.

  “As soon as I started prepping for the read, it didn’t feel right, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get it.” She managed a small smile. “Everything you said in your review of that show was right, and if you thought I was shit on opening night, after weeks of rehearsal, you should have seen me at the audition.”

  “But you got it.” Griff voiced the obvious, very calmly.

  “Yes. I did get it. Even though there must have been dozens of actors who were far better suited for it. Because two nights earlier, I’d had a
night out at the pub with friends. The Prop & Cue, actually,” she said, with the sudden realisation of the irony. One pub, two men, two very different encounters. “And I met a man at the bar. He bought me a drink, and we got talking. He was fit and he was clever, and he made me laugh. And I went home with him.”

  The rain was still a steady pattering rhythm on the roof.

  “I left in the morning, and I still remember him saying, with this little smile, that he’d ‘see me right.’ I didn’t know what he meant.” God, she’d been naïve, for someone who’d grown up in the industry. For all her father’s faults as a manager, he had kept her very sheltered from the uglier sides of the business. “I didn’t really expect to see him again. But when I showed up for the High Voltage audition, there he was. Drew from the bar. Drew Townseville. Artistic director.”

  She forged on, determined to just get this out now and be done with it. Shove it back in the past where it belonged. “I was even more thrown off. I did my shite audition, and I was too uncomfortable to look at him. I thought he’d be finding the whole thing as awkward as I was. It turns out that I was the only ignorant person in the pub that night. He knew exactly who I was, and he thought he knew exactly what I was after. Apparently, it was a not-so-secret secret that Drew used to reserve a spot, shall we say, in his productions for an actor who wanted to go the extra mile. If you were interested, you approached him before the audition. It was a horrendous coincidence, where I was concerned. I found out later that people used to discuss Drew’s methods behind their hands backstage all the time, but I’d always been one of the younger people in any cast before that show. People usually keep clear boundaries where the child actors are concerned. You don’t bitch and gossip in front of them.” Her lip curled a little. “His nickname in the West End is The Patron.”

  “As I suspected,” Griff said, “Townseville is a piece of shit.”

  Freddy looked up at him, and he ran his thumb over her lower lip. The gesture made her eyes sting as she moved haltingly into the part of the story she still heartily regretted. “Drew approached me after the audition and made it clear I’d be offered the part. The underlying why I’d get the part was equally clear. I was horrified. I wanted to tell him where he could shove his gross, sleazy role. But then his assistant came over, and I somehow ended up outside, not sure what just happened. And—” She was silent for a moment, just breathing in and out. “And when the official offer came in, my father was so bloody proud of me. He couldn’t stop talking about what a brilliant career I was going to have, how I was following in his footsteps. In Henrietta’s footsteps. Which in hindsight—” She snorted. “And in the end—I took it. A role that I in no way deserved. That I inadvertently earned in bed.” Once more, she couldn’t make eye contact with Griff. “Drew’s an undeniably brilliant director. I spent that run learning a hell of a lot, and I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.”

  For the tatters of her dignity, the little scoffing noise she made sounded too much like swallowed tears. “It was the first—the worst—bad decision I made, to walk a path that was being signposted by other people. And the thing is, even my career-ladder-obsessed father would have been appalled. A step too far even for him. He’d probably have knocked Drew’s teeth out.”

  Griff’s hand closed over her whitened knuckles, gently loosening her clenched fist before she could tear her skin with her own nails, and laced his fingers through hers. It was enough to help her take a calming breath.

  “Drew must have told Sadie. She’d think all her Christmases had come at once. She’s always hated me.”

  “Because you’ll always be a far more talented actor than she is,” Griff said very matter-of-factly, and she gave a little negative jerk of the head.

  “Nobody watching rehearsal today would agree with you. I couldn’t keep my lines straight with all the scene changes. She didn’t screw up once.”

  “I’m not surprised you found it hard to concentrate today. And Sadie is a good actor, but she has her own limits. She can repeat lines and she can mimic emotion, but she’ll never have the full package because she doesn’t understand the characters she plays. She doesn’t have the capacity to empathise with them. You might be less technically proficient in some areas, but you have heart and spirit that she won’t achieve if she’s still acting in forty years’ time. She knows that. And instead of taking inspiration from people who have the qualities she lacks, trying to grow and improve, she just tries to eliminate the competition. She undermines your confidence and makes you doubt yourself.” Griff brought their joined hands up and turned her chin so he could look directly into her eyes. “And you have no reason, ever, not to hold your head high. You’re an incredibly beautiful person, by any definition of the word, and I doubt you’ve done anything ill-intentioned in your life.”

  Freddy looked at him, then bent her head and kissed his thumb. And accidentally one of her own fingers. “Who’d have thought that my harshest critic would turn out to be the person who consistently makes me feel good about myself.”

  “Did you talk to anyone at the time?”

  “I told Sabrina. She’s seven years older and she’s always had a tendency to coddle me. She was furious on my behalf, but I could tell she thought, oh, Freddy’s been led into a situation she doesn’t want, yet again. I felt naïve enough already without having it from someone else.” Her grip on Griff loosened. “I was ashamed. An experience that I thought was spontaneous and equal suddenly seemed dirty. And I wish I hadn’t taken that job. For a number of reasons.”

  “You went home with Townseville because you liked him, and you wanted to. And you were eighteen years old, for God’s sake, and under an enormous amount of pressure. You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.” In a deceptively mild voice that didn’t match the bunched muscles in his arms and shoulders, he added, “Unlike that predatory fucker, who ought to have his dick cut off with a rusty saw.”

  Akiko’s words came back to Freddy, then, about a partner-in-crime, a buddy who always had her back, and she felt her mouth tilt. “Or a pair of safety scissors.” Putting a hand behind his head, she pulled him down to her and kissed him hard. “You know, if this goes on much longer, you’re in serious danger of becoming my best mate.”

  Griff tipped her under him with a suddenness that made her squeak. When she was breathless and could do nothing but hold on to his shoulders and enjoy, he lifted his head. “Who you fancy the pants off.”

  “Well, that goes without saying.” Freddy planted a butterfly kiss on him. “Although I thought we did spectacularly well with the pants on, as well.”

  He grinned then, that full-fledged grin that lit up his eyes and was still too rare, and their mouths met again. They lay for a long time, kissing and touching and half listening to the rain, Freddy’s leg tucked companionably over Griff’s hip.

  She pressed her palm to his cheek. “You make me feel equal,” she murmured slowly, and he rested his forehead on hers.

  His hand was stroking her thigh, soothing her into a dreamy state, and their kisses were turning gentle and drowsy, when his phone rang.

  No, not his phone. Hers. Her eyes opening from half-mast, Freddy let go of Griff and summoned enough motivation to feel behind her. It was wedged partly under her hip, and was lucky it hadn’t gone flying across the room with their earlier activities. She tilted the screen, and her stomach dropped.

  That same reaction, that same dread of facing his disappointment, no matter how old she got. “It’s Dad.”

  Griff pushed up on an elbow, his hair mussed, and looked from the phone back to her face. “Don’t answer it.”

  “I have to.” But, miserably, she let it ring again, putting off the inevitable.

  “Freddy. It’s late, you’re exhausted, and your rehearsals are going to hit manic mode tomorrow. There’s time to have it out with your father.” He held her gaze steadily, and Freddy breathed out.

  “Yeah
. Okay.” With her thumb, she rejected the call and switched the phone to silent, and laid it on the bedside table.

  When they’d turned the lights off, she lay on her side, Griff’s arm a heavy weight across her waist.

  She listened to his steady, deep breaths, and the tick of the beautiful little 1920s clock on his desk.

  “Griff.” She reached up to hold on to his wrist. “Before I found those letters, I told myself that if I cut ties with Dad professionally, it would blow over. Eventually. He has connections in the industry. He’d be able to take on more clients. And as my agent keeps pointing out, he has his writing career. But his writing career was built on the success of All Her World.” Which now turned out to be not a factual account of how The Velvet Room came to be, but the accidental corroboration of an elaborate lie. “Dad’s reputation could take a hit by association, especially if people think he knew. Which a lot of them will.” She frowned, and Griff’s arm tightened around her, his hand moving to flex compulsively on hers. “So could mine, I suppose.”

  Goodbye to the legacy of four centuries of successful actors; hello to the family name being synonymous with plagiarism. The fallout could go either way in her case. On the adage of all publicity being good publicity, a bit of notoriety might not harm her chances of booking jobs. It might even give her a boost, the industry being what it was. The more familiar the public were with your name, the more tickets you sold for the management.

  But as a respected theatrical biographer, Rupert was going to look either naïve or calculating. He’d profited hugely from everything that surrounded Henrietta Carlton, award-winning, history-making playwright.

  And another adage tended to be true, about shooting the messenger.

  “I’m going to be responsible for throwing my dad’s career, his whole life, into upheaval.” Again. Twenty years ago, she had been the catalyst for everything in Rupert’s world changing. Now it was happening again. “I’m not sure how to tell him.”