Page 19 of To Sketch a Scandal (Lucky Lovers of London #4)

When he held the pencil like Warren had shown him, Matty figured out how to draw simple shapes of passable quality—when he copied other shapes.

When he tried to draw them from life, however, to disassemble entire human beings into simplistic parts like some abstract, artistic serial killer, his ability went similarly to pieces again.

And that was dreadful, because the amount of useful intelligence he’d gotten by the end of class was basically zero.

Well, not quite zero. They did pick students out for individualized instruction, but that might only prove Warren’s small suspicion that they knew how to suck money out of artistic dreamers.

It was not remotely unique to a forgery operation.

Either way, though, he was likely never going to find out: not only had he attracted no special interest from the instructors, but had already been flagged as a hopeless case who might do well to quit while he was ahead.

Matty lay flat on his bed the next morning after waking.

Necessity had made him a disciplined fellow, and he rarely lingered among his pillows very long.

Today, though, for the first time in a long time, he could muster up no motivation to move.

He wouldn’t have minded another undercover day so much—in spite of his misgivings, it had proved a fairly pleasant change to his routine, if not especially fruitful.

But having not impressed the Buttersnipes yet, he would be back at headquarters until he could try again in the next class.

He was filled with dread, doom, and a feeling that had never plagued him before:

He didn’t want to go into headquarters.

It was easy to blame the nature of the case, but that wasn’t really the problem.

He’d been dreading his days for a while now, ever since Barrows had announced his retirement.

Add to that the nasty rumors, the change in his methods, the pressure to perform, and the presence of fucking Detective Ashton on the case and headquarters had become near-intolerable when compared with the pleasant work and pleasanter company at his easel yesterday.

He briefly wished he really was some foolish rich boy who’d convinced himself he could abandon everything else for a life of artistic ease, spending his days discussing truth instead of secrets and his nights somewhere like The Curious Fox with only the usual worries to bother him.

Reaching across the small expanse between bed and desk, he gathered up his sketchbook and flipped through it.

He rather liked some of the pages he’d done.

A real class and a bit of help from Warren had improved him more than he’d thought possible…

Or maybe it was his imagination. Yes, surely that was all. It was delusional, to think he could actually learn a new trade at this point. He couldn’t even manage a new undercover role without losing his way.

It felt better to believe that the rent boy roles he’d taken on before this had been as fabricated as this one, but they hadn’t been nearly so big a stretch.

Though he’d only been angling for his second trick when he was arrested at fifteen, the intent had been there.

The desperation. The damage. Until Scotland Yard, he’d been just as beautiful, just as friendless, just as undereducated as the lads he pretended to be when he was undercover.

He knew what it was, to charm from a place of need, whether it be for bread or for evidence. And it had made the roles easy.

He had no such experience to draw on now. This character, this aspiring artist… He snapped the sketchbook shut with a loud clap. This artist thing had nothing to do with Matty whatsoever. And it never would.

Unless…

He opened the sketchbook again, tracing his fingers over the pencil lines until they were fit to leave all manner of smudgy gray prints behind him.

He’d long since learned to be suspicious of ideas that seemed too convenient to be true, conclusions that were temptingly tidy and satisfying.

No crime was that simple, and that went for other aspects of life as well.

The notion that crossed his mind now, though, had that sort of convenient allure.

He ought to put it aside, but so snug in his bed with so little to look forward to at headquarters, he couldn’t shake it.

Matty could smash clay and dull pencils at his desk all day long—even if he mastered the mechanical aspects of drawing, he would never convince these Buttersnipes that he was worthy of a moment alone with them if he could not drive out the cultivated dimness in his eyes and set off a spark of creativity there instead.

He made a good whore because he’d been a whore.

If he wanted to make a good artist, didn’t it make sense to be an artist?

Even if just for a little while? If he made the investigative aspects his secondary concern for a time, giving in to his curiosity of what this false life would feel like if it were real, it might counterintuitively put him in the very position he needed to gather the intelligence that was otherwise barred from him.

Brilliant.

Or brilliant-seeming, anyway.

Far too brilliant-seeming to actually be brilliant. And the detective in him knew that.

But the detective in him was no match for something else that was rising up in him this morning. Something tired and protesting that simply could not stand going in there and watching Ashton smirk and say Shaw with his mouth while he flashed Matilda with his eyes.

He threw his sketchbook on the ground, then rolled over and shut his eyes to go back to sleep.

Artists, he felt, didn’t worry overmuch about getting to the office on time.

* * *

That afternoon, he packed up all hints that his room had ever belonged to a detective, replacing legal books, grim memo pads, and tidy black inkwells with an ale mug of sharpened pencils, a fresh stack of wide drawing paper, a bowl of erasers that didn’t know what toil they were in for, and a small bottle of absinthe that he hadn’t gotten up the nerve to consume yet, but figured was an important thing for any real artist to have on hand.

He put his patched coat and lumpy scarf back on—his uniform—and began practicing the most useful shapes he’d learned in class yesterday, one by one, like little armies marching across his paper.

He would cultivate obsession. He would draw by choice, on his own time, until Matty Shaw could say he was indeed an aspiring artist in all the ways that mattered.

He never went into the office at all. Why should he?

He went on until the encroaching evening had him lighting candles—not lamps, lamps were not as aesthetically pleasing—and just as he was settling back in to continue identifying and marking down the shapes he found in the untouched absinthe bottle before him, the landlady banged on his door.

“Oy, Detective. Comp’ny for you.”

Matty covered his work with a stray piece of paper so no one could witness his hideous disassembly of the innocent bottle in too violent of detail.

When he opened the door, Mrs. Wooster was standing with Detective Barrows, who did not look pleased with him at all. Barrows took his hat off his mostly bald head and held it to his chest.

“I apologize for coming so late,” he said with barely-contained irritation. “I hope it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not at all,” Matty said, very tense. “It’s…it’s lovely to see you, sir. Mrs. Wooster, could you ask Gretta to put the tea on?”

“Of course,” the landlady said. “Will you take it in the sitting room?”

Barrows shook his head before Matty could answer. “If it’s alright, I think I should like to speak with Mr. Shaw privately.”

Matty grimaced. “If she could bring it up here, then, please.”

Once she left, Barrows rounded on him. “Where the devil were you today?”

“I can explain, sir.” Now in the presence of his higher-up, that artsy defiance he’d been cultivating all day vanished. His posture went straight as a goddamned board. “Come in.”

Matty helped Barrows out of his long overcoat, finding a hook for it and his hat. When he turned back, Barrows was taking in Matty’s transformed room: the open art books, piles of crumpled papers, and the now-prominently-displayed absinthe bottle posed right in the center of his desk.

“Does it always look like this?” Barrows asked with concern.

“No, sir!” Matty threw open his wardrobe to show the more suitable objects he’d replaced today. “After the first class went rather poorly, I decided that I need to really, really get into this particular character, or it will all be lost.”

Barrows lifted a skeptical brow. “By not showing up at headquarters?”

Matty cringed inwardly, but tried to keep it from showing. “Yes, actually. Come…come sit, sir, we’ll—”

But Barrows did not sit. Instead, he paced, sharp gaze dusting every surface as if expecting to pick up fingerprints with his eyeballs.

It was his first time seeing this room since the day he’d secured it and paid the first year’s rent for Matty’s eighteenth birthday, moving him out of Barrows’s own spare room in a move far too generous to have upset Matty as much as it did at the time.

Figured it would be today of all days that Barrows would come—when he’d made his bed up only lazily, all evidence of his mostly-upright life hidden away in favor of excess and absinthe.

Matty squirmed as Barrows went around, brow cocked in judgment.

He traced the new spines on the bookshelf.

Eyed the box of obnoxious neckcloths that had been procured from a pawnshop and left sitting out after dressing.

At last, he got to the desk, where he moved the paper Matty’d used to cover his recent crime against beauty.

Barrows stared at Matty’s efforts, then covered them back up the way he’d found them, as quick and respectful as with any tragic and unsightly victim.