Page 18 of To Sketch a Scandal (Lucky Lovers of London #4)

For someone who had supposedly used his good looks more often under cover of night, Matty Shaw was downright distracting in the sunlit classroom.

As suspected, his eyes were blue—such an obnoxious and unlikely blue that Warren would have expected the shade more readily upon one of the Buttersnipes’ canvases than on an actual person.

Though Matty was still using stubble and patchy clothes to hide the impression that he’d been dreamed up and brought to life Pygmalion-style, it was a futile effort.

The nearly mathematical beauty of him lent a sense of unreality to this entire reunion.

Warren wasn’t in the habit of bumping into blokes he’d fucked (or nearly so).

If ever he did, the right response was to feign complete ignorance that they’d ever even met.

Though they both should have known better, they’d bungled that one from the beginning, already acknowledging each other, climbing the stairs together, and choosing seats beside each other.

Matty’d shared a secret, and Warren had shared a laugh.

They were already in a lot deeper than they should be, and Warren didn’t have a script for this one.

“We shall start,” Mr. Buttersnipe said as his wife collected the payments from her little helper, “by identifying and copying basic shapes. Our proprietary portraiture method centers around identifying the shapes that are unique to your subject, and applying them to the shapes that are universal in the human form. We will do this by finding shapes around the room to start with; our figure model had to pull out at the last minute, but I’m sure we will find another by the next class. ”

Warren glanced over at Matty, poised to make a quip about volunteering, but found the bloke looking very busy resettling his sketchbook on the easel.

Warren had to wonder if the clumsiness with which he adjusted it was part of his act.

In fact, maybe all this talk of being dreadful at art was an act too…

Warren shook himself and got back to setting up his own station before he got caught staring.

There were an awful lot of reasons not to speculate about Matty Shaw.

He was specifically trying to avoid notice, after all; seemed rude for Warren to over-examine someone who needed to blend in.

Not to mention, even if he were receptive to Warren’s attention, he was decidedly off-limits.

Joking and watching might not be the best way to remind himself of that.

The coincidence of the class was not Warren’s fault, but Forester wouldn’t be happy if he heard they’d gotten friendly, whatever the context.

Mr. Buttersnipe started in with a lecture on identifying the “basic shapes” of people’s heads and facial features, a process that was as overcomplicated as it was potentially offensive.

That said, Warren found it easy enough. The instructors themselves were full of shapes—the shallow triangle of his chin, the long rectangle of her torso, the perfect circles of both their spectacles.

Warren applied them casually to his paper until he grew bored and started looking for other sources of inspiration.

Matty was sitting right beside him. Sure, he ought not pay too much attention to the bloke, but it was the assignment to look around a bit, wasn’t it?

He found the pretty detective sketching out his oblong faces, triangular noses, and rounded eyes with impeccable posture and some sense of resignation.

Like he knew perfectly well that the instruction was garbage, but considering his own ability was at the bottom of the bin, it might provide him with a way out if he could grasp and scale it.

He meticulously etched each marking with a slow deliberation, his brow furrowed and his tongue between his teeth in utter concentration.

So distracting was that tongue in particular—it looked so innocent, but Warren knew better—that he did not notice Mrs. Buttersnipe coming up behind him until he felt Miss Martha lie down atop his own shoe.

Up close, the smell of turpentine that hung around her was stronger, which probably explained a lot.

“Good,” she said at last, nodding slowly as she examined his paper.

“But don’t stop now! Keep going, fill these pages to their very limits!

The more shapes you can see in your subjects, the more individualized your portraits can be.

You’re off to a very good start, Mr. Bakshi.

Too soon to tell, but I have a good feeling about your chances at a certain invitation. ”

Before he could even thank her for the compliment, the weight of the dog was gone and the instructor was too, moving on to Matty.

“Oh.” She froze as she laid eyes upon his paper. “Oh my dear. I…” She broke off, looking down at Miss Martha for a moment of deliberation before going on in a pinched voice. “Have you ever done anything like this before, dear?”

Warren tried to ignore this conversation. It was not his business.

“I have not, ma’am,” Matty said in an even voice that cut right through Warren’s defenses. “That’s why I’m here. To learn from geniuses like yourselves.”

Warren snorted quietly at the completely straight-faced way Matty managed that one. Against his better judgment, he took a peek and found Mrs. Buttersnipe’s face had gone as pinched as her voice.

“Well…carry on, then,” she said airily, turning to go.

“Do you have any tips?” Matty went on before she could abandon him. “For me particularly? What do you think I’m doing wron—”

“Just be sure to practice at home,” said Mrs. Buttersnipe with a dismissive wave. “You’ll need to catch up to the other students before the figure model arrives next week, or…” She shrugged. “It’s not for everyone, dear.”

“But, ma’am—”

She went on to the next without another word. Matty stared after her for a moment, sort of blankly bewildered, then turned back to his paper, looking lost.

Warren returned to his own collection of shapes, determined first off to pretend he’d heard nothing, and second to choose a different seat next week.

Matty was a distraction and a temptation too great to resist. Of course, he wasn’t about to follow him into another alley, but even the friendliness he felt compelled to start up was all wrong.

Their respective jobs simply didn’t allow for it.

Matty wasn’t here for friendship, and Warren couldn’t be friends with someone in law enforcement, not even one who was determined to miss all his tricks.

Forester was right about that. Trouble for their sort could move swifter than a pox if you weren’t careful who you let in.

As he worked on his shapes, though, trying not to glance over, he felt Matty’s gaze find him instead. Those ridiculous eyes of his were like the hottest of little blue flames. Warren tried to ignore the burning of attention, but eventually succumbed to meeting it head-on.

“What?”

Matty grimaced, caught. “I’m sorry, I was just…

I was trying to capture the shape of your ear.

Like she said to do.” He turned his sketchbook to point out something that looked uncannily like a horrid lump of bread Anjali had baked last week.

“Hold still, will you? Can’t you see I’ve nearly got an exact replica? ”

Something warmer and sweeter even than desire swept through Warren at the self-deprecation.

He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t.

But the rule of avoidance he’d been trying to talk himself into all morning could not stand against the memory of those artistically deficient hands running up the back of his coat.

He stepped over to Matty’s station. The paper was filled with darkly penciled, tortured-looking shapes.

The problem was instantly obvious to Warren—the lines were childish, a function of grip.

He couldn’t fix everything—that scarf was a really sobering reminder of just what Matty was working with—but he did have a tip.

He could share it, probably. What harm was there in that?

He liked being helpful, and with opportunities to do so at home waning, he couldn’t seem to help the chance that appeared before him now.

“Here.” Going against every limit he’d tried to convince himself mattered, he took Matty’s hand and helped him to adjust his stiff, awkward fingers. Matty didn’t react much, but Warren heard how his next breath came very even, deep, and nerve-settling.

“I should think,” he muttered as close to Matty’s ear as he dared, so no one else would hear, “from our last encounter, that you have sufficient experience to know you don’t need this sort of death grip to get the job done.”

Matty looked up at him, still sitting on his stool whilst Warren stood. The angle destroyed any last bit of resolve Warren had.

“Relax a little,” Warren went on, shaking Matty’s arm out and guiding him back to the paper with its more suitable grip. He lingered only for the split second that Matty would notice and anyone looking on would not, though his own fingers went on tingling after he let go.

Matty took another of those steadying breaths and tried again on the kidney shape he was attempting for an ear.

“That’s it,” Warren said.

“No, it’s not,” said Matty. But his second try, while still too heavily drawn and pinched at the bottom, was a bit better. “Thank you. How did you learn that, anyway?”

The question poked at a soft spot that produced a protective shell of sarcasm: “Don’t take much learning to realize you shouldn’t hold a pencil like you hold a bobby bat, mate.”

Matty didn’t blink. “Natural ability, then?”

Warren would have preferred to leave it there, but it felt too dishonest. “My father was an artist,” he said grudgingly.

He glanced around self-consciously, but they weren’t the only pairs quietly chatting as they worked.

He went on. “That’s why he and my mum came to London in the first place.

He never got to do it full-time. The work he took to support the family was too demanding.

We’d doodle together when he was home, though. Silly stuff.”

It was actually a relief to talk to someone clearly accustomed to sucking every drop of information from a sentence.

It was quite the opposite of what Warren usually experienced, chatting up some man from behind the bar.

He was lucky if those fellows let him get a word in, luckier still if they heard the words he spoke.

Matty, on the other hand, was obviously listening, considering, and remembering.

He took Warren’s words in slowly, nodded like he really understood, and then did not ask a single stupid question before returning quietly to his work.

Warren supposed he ought to do the same.

He tried to look about the room at the other would-be artists, attempting to break their forms up into the constituent shapes they’d be working with to make these cheap, cookie-cutter portraits.

Every fiber of him wanted to look only at Matty—he was, by far, both the loveliest and the most interesting person in this room.

But he brought his reluctant attention instead to a stocky bloke with longish hair, one who looked like he’d taken some of Oscar Wilde’s old anti-fashion advice a bit too much to heart.

In terms of shapes, he was comprised largely of wide rectangles. Head and shoulders, and…

The bloke turned and caught Warren looking at him.

His eyes went to very oblong slits and his mouth to an upside-down crescent.

Not so easily intimidated, Warren held up his pencil, swirling it around a little.

I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing , he communicated as best he could without words. So bugger off, will you?

The bloke did just that, going back to his work with a moody little huff and a toss of his long curls.

“Making friends already?” came the pleasant, dry voice from his left that was becoming alarmingly familiar. Matty’s eyes were on his own paper, but his mouth was doing that tantalizing thing again. Almost smiling.

Warren shrugged, face heating as he returned to his rectangles.

“Maybe I am.”