“Go on, have a proper drink,” Therese urges me.

“I have to write later,” I say, accepting the water from my father. Out of the corner of my eye I see Mona roll hers.

Therese looks up at Monsieur d’Estang. “Dad says you’ve been cast in a new production. What is it?”

He turns to her with a smile. “I’m playing Rochester in a new musical production of Jane Eyre.”

I look at him from beneath my lashes. Well, he’ll be perfect. Stormy, dark features, penetrating eyes and high cheekbones. He’s in a crisp white shirt now, but I can just imagine his broad figure in a frock coat and his legs in leather riding boots. Musically he’ll be good too. His singing voice can rattle windows with fury or caress with love.

Mona frowns at me. “You’ve read that book, haven’t you, Evie?”

About a thousand times. “Oh, that book. Yes, I should think everybody’s read that book.”

“Evie loves that—” Lisbet begins.

“A musical adaptation, that’s different,” I say. “What made you interested in the part?”

Monsieur d’Estang accepts a gin and tonic from my father. “It’s just such a different sort of role for me. When I was a young man I was called elfin and allowed to grow my hair out and play romantic leads. But then someone noticed what an excellent scowl I have, and my face began to harden with age, so they sheared off my curls, et voilà.” He sweeps his hand in a little flourish. “I am a villain. And, I thought, typecast for life. So it was a surprise, and a pleasant one, to be invited to play a romantic hero once more.”

I’ve seen photographs of Monsieur d’Estang as a very young man, and he was elfin, but very striking all the same. I think about the role and whether you could call Mr. Rochester, so driven by his passions, so contemptuous of the laws of society and the Church, a hero. “Some would say Mr. Rochester is a villain,” I muse out loud.

He tilts his head to one side. “Oh, that’s interesting. Would you say so?”

I’m not used to being asked to speak my opinion out loud in this house, and certainly not about something as achingly dull, as Mona would say, as nineteenth-century literature. “I don’t know,” I say, plucking at a loose thread on the side of the chair. “Maybe.”

We all finish our drinks and are herded into dinner. The talk is dominated by my father and sisters, particularly Mona and Therese. Mum and I eat and listen, and Lisbet, who hates being left out of anything, tries desperately to edge herself into the conversation.

“And what do you all do when you’re not summering here?” Monsieur d’Estang asks us.

Lisbet tells him about her dressage ribbons and Therese her law degree. Then Mona brings up her upcoming audition with an opera production company in London, and the talk inevitably becomes music-focused.

Finally Monsieur d’Estang turns to me. “You’re a writer, Evie. What are you working on?”

Therese cuts across me. “She ghostwrites autobiographies for old ladies and things.”

Thanks, Therese. You make it sound so interesting. She catches my baleful look and opens her eyes wide in a well, you do expression.

“Now, there’s a thought,” Dad says to Monsieur d’Estang. “Your Canadian agent emailed me yesterday and said he’s been trying to convince you to write your memoirs. Get Evie to do it for you,” he says, laughing. “She can cast a good sentence.”

Monsieur d’Estang gives him a tight smile. “Martin told you that, did he?”

Oh, Dad, shut up, please... I’m counting the number of weeks until the university opens again when Mona’s phone buzzes. An email has just come in. She’s got the audition she was hoping for. “God, it was like, the most perfect thing. I saw the director in a café so I went in and I just started singing. No hello or anything, I just burst into the aria and then left her my email address.”

Dad purses his lips, but his eyes are glimmering with amusement. “My daughter. I have to work with these people, you know.”

Tapping a reply into her phone, Mona mutters, “What? It worked, didn’t it? You understand, don’t you, Monsieur d’Estang?”

I’m fairly certain Monsieur d’Estang always had too much class to make a twit out of himself like that, but he just smiles and says, “Anything for a part.”

After dinner Lisbet goes straight to the living room and hunts through the DVD collection for one of Monsieur d’Estang’s recorded performances, which she’s never been interested in before. She chooses The Phantom of the Opera. I know it well. The man who plays Raoul is romantic in a bland sort of way. The Phantom, played by Frederic d’Estang, is manic, bold and powerful.

Lisbet’s mouth is open as she watches him on the screen. I’m familiar with the sensation she’s feeling: She’s in the early throes of her first proper crush, an innocent, naïve infatuation that will cycle from daisy-plucking to wistful diary entries and back again.

Little idiot, I think, and stalk upstairs.

Chapter Two

Tags: Brianna Hale Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net