Page 20 of To Sketch a Scandal (Lucky Lovers of London #4)

“Is this really what you’ve been doing all day?” Barrows said at last. “Leaving me worrying and Ashton making snide remarks so you could turn your own private quarters into an artist’s den?”

Matty took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

“And why, exactly, did that seem like a good idea to you, lad?”

“Because,” Matty said, unable to fully meet his eye, “I believe I’ve swum out rather grievously over my head on this one, sir.”

Just then, Gretta the kitchen girl arrived with their tea.

Buttery crumpets had been added to the tray unasked—Mrs. Wooster liked to stay in the good graces of officers.

Barrows thanked the girl with a very convincing smile, one which vanished impressively fast when he was alone with Matty once more.

Not having much occasion for private company, Matty’s room was set up for one, with a single chair he moved a few feet between desk and fireplace as needed.

Presently, he moved it from the desk toward the fireplace, partly because it seemed more hospitable, and partly to get Barrows facing away from the absinthe bottle, which glowed like an eerie beacon in the candlelight.

He gestured for Barrows to take the chair.

Matty perched on the mantel, elbows on knees and fingers tapping against each other in a frantic rhythm.

He drew breath to explain himself, but was cut off very gruffly.

“You’ve gone to pieces,” declared Barrows. “After all this time, after all you’ve done, you’ve gone to pieces at the last moment, haven’t you?”

Maybe it was that he’d already gone against his orders once this morning.

Or maybe there was a sense of having been cornered, a sense that had not seemed possible between them until Frost’s suspicions and Ashton’s presence ruined everything.

Either way, Matty could not find any appropriate words with which to respond.

All he could find was an anger so large and so violent that it must have been growing since long before now.

“At the last moment,” he said, tapping his fingers faster as the words hissed out of him like a slow, controlled leak from an overfilled balloon.

“In case you’ve forgotten, sir, I am not retiring.

This is not my last moment. I have to live with the consequences of this disaster, and I am doing the best I can. ”

“Not showing up is your best?”

“Yes.” This time, Matty did snap. “The plan isn’t going to work, sir. I have no talent—I will never get good enough to get the time of day out of these people. And I’m not an actor. I can’t convince them I’m something I’m not, so I must become—”

“What the devil do you mean you can’t convince them you’re something you’re not?” said Barrows. “You do it all the time.”

“I do not,” Matty insisted, the intensity coming faster as his control over it lessened.

“I convince people I’m a little more stupid, sure.

That I’m an independent entity. That I’m harm less.

These are details, though; they’re not what I am.

I have never actually pretended to be something so different from what I am.

And, at least on such short notice, it’s proving fairly impossible.

If it were just that I had the wrong disposition, or just the poor artistry, it might be different, but lacking both, I will never get the suspects alone.

They already hinted they might kick me out.

I can’t let that happen, sir. Not under any circumstances. ”

Barrows was staring at him like a puzzle to crack. Like he couldn’t understand a word of what Matty was saying. “You’re not a valet,” he said at last. “You were a valet for the last big one.”

“Not quite. I was a pretty young man pretending to be a better valet than I really was,” said Matty. “In case you’ve forgotten, it wasn’t my skill with a Windsor knot that got me hired by Mr. Forester.”

“You’re not a whore, either—”

“I was.”

The silence that followed was uncomfortable for Matty, but Barrows seemed more annoyed than anything. “For one night of your life, Matthew, versus ten years of detective work. If what you were saying were true, you’d be fit for nothing but pretending you’re bloody Sherlock Holmes.”

“Eight years.”

Barrows blinked. “What do you mean eight?”

“Well, the first two, you just had me going to school by day and entrapping when you needed me,” said Matty. “I wasn’t working on cases, so there was no real difference on my part aside from when the night ended, and who paid me when it did.”

Barrows looked so much like he’d been slapped across the face that Matty’s anger turned rapidly into regret. Maybe he shouldn’t have put it so harshly. To make up for his honesty, he got up to pour a cup of conciliatory tea for Barrows.

Barrows took the full cup carefully in hand, but did not move to drink it. “That’s how you saw it?”

Matty busied his hands fixing his own cup, suddenly feeling very awkward indeed. “Did you see it differently?”

He stared at Matty over the teacup, sipping at last as if debating whether to call him out for turning the question around. Once he’d pulled the cup from his lips, he said, “You weren’t a whore. You were reformed.”

“ Reformed ?” Matty realized with a jolt that he was missing his teacup and jerked the pot upright.

“Sir, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if I were reformed.

I don’t take money, sure, but if I were truly reformed in all the ways that matter, there would be no suspicions to worry about in the first place. No rumors that carried any weight—”

“A few indiscretions do not define a man, Matthew—”

“Easy for you to say.” He hated how petulant, even childish the words sounded. He swallowed guiltily. “Um. Sir.”

“Nice save,” said Barrows wryly. “Look. I see that Frost’s words have shaken you; I understand.

But Matthew, you are not a whore. You are not an unskilled valet.

You are not an artist. You are a detective, and I expect to see you at the office tomorrow morning.

” He finished his tea, then got up and gathered his hat.

“We only have so many of those mornings together, you know, before it’s you and Ashton finishing things up. ”

“Bugger Ashton,” Matty muttered before he could stop himself.

“I’ve told you already—he means you no ill will.”

“Means me no particular goodwill either, sir. That much was perfectly clear when I heard how fast he changed his tune with Frost.”

Barrows put his hat on, the shadow of it lending a severity to his expression. “This is Scotland Yard, Matthew. We’re here to serve our city. Not make friends,” he said bluntly. “I will see you in the morning.”

As the door slammed shut behind him, it was with all Matty’s hopes that he’d been more than a tool to this man on the other side of it. The lonely room took on a new echo in his absence, like all the furniture had been moved out of it and now Matty was just standing alone on the empty floorboards.

Barrows was partially right about him.

He wasn’t a whore. He wasn’t a valet. He wasn’t an artist.

But quite frankly, he wasn’t a detective, either. He was an unwanted boy saved from one bad decision, grown to a man who’d never managed to make another one for himself.

He was determined to make one now, though.

He didn’t have a lot to choose from at this point, his world having been so narrowly guided by one old man who’d clearly never noticed or cared what a vital figure he was in Matty’s imagination.

But he had the sketchbook, all his pencils, and however many classes it took to figure out what the Buttersnipes were up to.

In the week that followed, he could not, as he’d wanted, give off mornings at headquarters to cultivate some sense of new identity.

He had to go in, had to please Barrows by getting back to business and deal with Ashton’s intermittent, smirking presence in their crowded office.

But he still believed that cultivating an artistic mindset would help with the case, a notion that now took on the weight of desire to do it for his own sake as well.

He did not discuss it with Barrows and Ashton, but before the next class, he spent his free time very differently.

He visited galleries and asked questions of the artists there.

He went to bookshops in Fleet Street, perusing art books but not buying them, until the shopkeeps kicked him out.

He wandered museums, daring himself to feel rather than catalog what he was seeing, trying to keep his heart open and the slate of his mind clean of practical thought.

He sat in parks drinking paper cups of coffee, trying to identify the shapes of strangers’ eyes and noses.

He slept later than usual, wasted money in cafés, and tried the absinthe (though, regrettably, he would need a little more adjustment to the artist’s life before he could do more than try it).

It was all so drastically different that it took only a few days for an odd change to take hold.

He started to feel like the Met was where he was undercover—nodding politely, saying all the right things, remaining steady and predictable—while his off-hours took on a new allure.

Though he’d stumbled into these habits as surly as he’d stumbled into his old ones, they proved a balm to the sense of upheaval he was facing at work, and he threw himself in as completely as he could.