Page 16 of To Sketch a Scandal (Lucky Lovers of London #4)

Matty’s professional life had been spent mostly in the shadows. Ten years ago, Barrows had led him from a small, dark cell into a small, dark room and said, “I’d like to make a deal with you, lad.” It was all shifty alleys and midnight whorehouses after that.

His arrival at Buttersnipe’s School for Artistic Enrichment couldn’t have been more different.

There was still bite to the air, but it was an oddly sunny day for the time of year.

He might have enjoyed the change if he trusted his new character, but as he went up the saggy steps that led to the door, feigning impoverished artist rather than confident model, he felt frighteningly visible.

It felt like every person on the street below knew precisely what he was.

Even the door seemed to be staring back at him, its grimy window like a massive eye glaring right through his ruse.

Oh, he’d done the visual right, because that’s what he did best. He wore his patched jacket and a neckcloth printed with loud, flopping poppy flowers, the green scarf wound loose over his shoulders with pride in the handmade life.

He’d put the ring from Barrows on a chain around his neck so it did not get in the way of his creative fingers.

His informal cap was squished upon hair that had missed a trim, that stubble he’d been promised hinting that he’d just been too busy creating to bother with upkeep.

With his sketchbook tucked under his arm, he cut a fine enough aesthetic figure. Nothing external would give him away.

But as the door’s window peered judgingly at him, he could simultaneously peer judgingly right back at his own reflection.

His face was all wrong. People wanted their playthings docile, dim-witted.

He’d played that part so long, he could see himself slipping into it even now.

There was no spark of the headstrong creativity that he’d written up in his character profile.

Even under the quirky accessories and stubble, he looked tame, accommodating, unlikely to make a fuss about anything.

He was not sure whether his real self possessed the bold qualities he needed—maybe, maybe not, his own nature was not his concern—but the undercover self he’d built up over the years certainly did not.

He steeled himself against the cruel convictions of the door, grabbing its handle firmly, preparing to do battle with it.

The handle was smooth and cool even through his glove.

He turned it with the determination he so desperately needed, but had hardly heard the click of its release before that determination wavered and wobbled and then finally expired on the spot.

He took his hand back like it’d been burned, roiling with anxiety.

He couldn’t pull this off.

There was so much uncertainty inside this building.

So many things that could go wrong. So little he felt equipped to handle.

To be found out could spoil a case completely, could prove dangerous or even fatal depending on the circumstance.

While he saw potential art fraud as less grim than the usual crimes he investigated, the consequences the Buttersnipes would face if they were caught in a scheme of this magnitude were still grievous.

People could become desperate when their freedom was on the line.

He did not have enough information about this couple yet to ascertain how badly his discovery might spiral if they caught on to his ruse.

Surely that risk was worse than the unprovable rumors he was facing back at headquarters?

He couldn’t go in there. It would be the end of him more certainly than anything else. He needed to talk to Barrows. Needed to go back to the old plan, to risk it, because suddenly it seemed the lesser risk by far. He spun round, head down.

His escape was thwarted as he crashed headlong into a man who had gotten up behind him while he was buried in his ruminations.

“Oy!”

There was an instant of off balance, right on the edge of the steps. Matty found his footing first, and grasped for the flailing arm of his hapless victim, steadying him at the top of the stoop.

“I’m sorry, I—” Matty tipped his brim and raised his eyes to a sight he’d assumed doomed to lonely fantasies. He’d yet to see that face in the light of day, but even if he’d not recognized it, its beauty would have caught him just as off guard as its familiarity.

“War—” Manners, Matty, you’re not bum-out in an alley. “Mr. Bakshi?”

Warren looked round like he expected someone to jump out of the bushes and tell him this was some big joke. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you I needed to study art,” he said vaguely.

Warren’s eyes narrowed. “Why would a det—”

“Shh!”

Matty took him by the arm again, pulling him in close on the corner of the stoop to speak in an ear he found devilishly adorned with a delicious-looking yellow gem. He took a steadying breath. “It would be best,” he whispered, “if we kept my occupation between us.”

Perhaps the prettiest brown eyes Matty’d ever seen met his own, having an inconvenient effect on his pulse’s tempo. Still, he did not look away. Warren examined him for a long moment, the curiosity on his face finally cracking to reveal excitement instead.

“Are you investigating this place?” he asked in a rather feeble attempt at whispering. He looked up at the building like he’d uncovered some satisfyingly nasty dirt on it. “Ha! I knew it. I told my mum the advertisement looked like a bloody scam!”

“Shh!” Matty squeezed his arm in hopes it might quiet him down.

Dear Lord, had he really been fretting about having his cover blown by his own lack of creative spirit, when it was about to be blown far more explicitly by the very last person Matty had expected to meet on this stoop?

He could not let Warren know he was investigating the instructors—that would ruin everything—but he could not allow open discussion of his detective-hood, either.

He cast about for a reason to inspire Warren’s discretion.

“I’m…not on a case just yet,” he lied desperately.

He didn’t like doing that, but what choice did he have?

“I’m training for one. I’ll have to play an artist, but since I have no skills, my supervisor made me sign up for this class.

I need to get better before it’s too late.

” As the falsehood slipped from his lips, he wished it were true.

Wouldn’t that have been nice? To not be thrown in the deep end with an ugly coat and a ball of yarn?

To have had a chance to get to know a way of being before he was expected to fit seamlessly into it?

“If you’re not investigating them,” Warren asked, “then why can’t they know who you are?”

“It’s a small community, the artistic one,” Matty said wildly, not sure how true that was.

Sounded true. Probably true. “I don’t know who these, ah—” he pretended not to remember the name, checking his pocket for the ad “—these Buttersnipes might know, and I don’t want it getting around that there’s some junior detective taking art classes in London if I can help it.

It would be poor timing. With the, you know.

The actual case. Which is coming later. And has nothing to do with these folks, who I assume are, you know, perfectly fine. ”

Damn, where was all this babbling coming from?

Matty was suddenly thankful he’d rarely worked around attractive suspects; seemed his ability to remain convincing faltered under such pressure.

Warren looked him in the eye for another moment, as if suspecting there was a crack in this story.

Or maybe that was Matty’s own paranoia, because it wasn’t long before he snorted a laugh.

“If you say so, Mr. Shaw,” he paused. “If I may call you Mr. Shaw, and not some pseudonym you’re taking on for the class’s duration.”

There was a devilish note of friendly conspiracy in his voice, not unlike the last time they’d met. Poor Matty forgot not his own name—at least—but the one he’d intended to use.

“It’s a common enough name,” Matty said, deciding to let the pseudonym go rather than inspire more suspicion in this chap. “Have at it.”

“One more question.”

Matty swallowed hard. He realized that after all this time he was still, quite inappropriately, clutching Warren’s arm. He let go, straightening the lumpy scarf about his neck and trying to forget all the wonderful ways Warren had used it to his advantage last time they’d met. “What question?”

“Why were you leaving?” Warren asked. “When I got here, you were starting down the steps and you had, if I may be so bold as to say so, quite a lot of momentum behind you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were in the process of bolting.”

“I, uh…” Matty faltered. “I just… I wasn’t sure if—”

“Are you really so bad at drawing that you considered not going in at all? Not even when you needed to?” With that judg ing tone, he might as well have said, Tell me, Matty, darling, are you some sort of bleeding coward?

Warren’s skeptically-raised brow changed everything.

Matty was not a bleeding coward. He was plenty of dreadful things, but that had never been one of them.

Witnessed now, not just by the eye of the door, but by someone he wanted the approval of, he could not follow through with the act of cowardice he’d so nearly committed.

“I was,” he admitted. “But I think I might stay after all.”

Warren grinned, briefly wolfish but settling quickly into something more suited to the daylight they’d so unexpectedly found themselves in.

“Good.” He reached past Matty for the door handle. “Then maybe this won’t be a complete waste of my time and my brother’s money.”

* * *

Matty had never been in a proper academy of art, and he suspected that the owners of Buttersnipe’s School for Artistic Enrichment had not, either.