Page 42 of To Sketch a Scandal (Lucky Lovers of London #4)

“Meddling bitch,” Warren muttered with equal parts annoyance and grudging respect once Noah had left. “D’you think he’s going to hold us to this ridiculous thing?”

“Absolutely,” said Matty without hesitation.

Obviously, he didn’t know Mr. Clarke as well as Warren did, but he’d seen, toward the end of the Belleville case, the frankly deranged lengths to which the fellow would go for Mr. Forester.

He had a decent notion of what they were dealing with.

“If anything, I reckon he will grant less time than promised.”

They’d not finished making the bed, the sheet smooth but untucked, the counterpane and pillows still heaped on the floor.

There was an uncertain silence, half-chill and half-heat like in the Buttersnipes’ woozy art room as they quietly completed the task.

They’d made this bed up many times together by now.

Matty’s corner tucks were nearly as tidy as Warren’s at this point, and he knew just where each pillow should be stacked for the most pleasing effect.

Matty took a little extra time with that, maybe, really making sure the corners’ angles and the lay of the fringe were just so…

“Matty.”

Eyes fixed, he combed his fingers through an especially ill-used tassel, tucking the fraying strands behind the better ones. “Look, Warren, I’m sor—”

“I meant it, you know.”

Matty froze, fingers still tangled in silky threads. He could feel Warren’s gaze across the now-tidy bed, so insistent and intense that Matty had no choice but to meet it, even as he felt a competing desire to hide under the counterpane.

“It would be alright if you didn’t,” said Matty quietly.

“Maybe,” said Warren, though he sounded unconvinced.

“But I do. I…” He broke off, sheepishly scratching the back of his neck, where that itchy scarf was likely a genuine bother that Warren was forever putting up with simply because Matty had made it.

“I’m sorry if I was awkward about it. It’s just that I’ve never felt this way before, like keeping you in my life is more important than…

well, more important than most anything, really.

Especially something as silly and fleeting as my reputation behind The Curious Fox’s bar. ”

Matty, warmed as he was by the sweet admission, wasn’t sure he was following.

“What do you mean, your reputation?” Warren sighed heavily through his nose, then slumped onto the edge of the bed.

Tentatively, Matty joined him, not coming around but heading straight across the mattress on his hands and knees until they were beside each other, smoothness of the counterpane be damned. “Warren?”

“I lied,” Warren said regretfully. “Not to you. But to Mr. Forester. He asked me whether we had something special or if we were just companions. I was too cowardly to admit how I really felt to someone who only knows me as the debauched barkeep. I like being seen as the debauched barkeep—it’s so opposite from how I had to be at home, you know, and some days, the escape of getting to be something different was all that kept me showing up strong and doing what I had to do for myself and my mother.

But we’re not on our own anymore, and…” He paused, his hand sliding over the brocade to cover Matty’s.

“There are other things keeping me going. Still, if I’m honest, I don’t think I would have admitted it to anyone but you if Mr. Clarke hadn’t cornered us.

I can’t help but think that if I’d just told Forester straight off what this was becoming, it could have saved us all a lot of trouble and stress.

And I’m sorry for that, because, Matty, I truly, truly adore you.

Now that I’ve got to face what I did, I hate that I let anyone believe anything else. ”

Warren’s air of confidence and capability did not often waver, but now he could hardly look Matty in the eye.

Matty put a careful hand on his cheek and coaxed him until he turned, finding a vulnerability in his eyes that proved a more profound reflection than even the one Matty’d found in the public house mirror.

They were the same, weren’t they? Constantly playing at a simple, easy-to-explain character, as if it would save them from a fate they believed would swallow them whole otherwise.

But being a debauched barkeep was not really what kept Warren from sliding into the marriage and familial self-sacrifice he felt doomed to—he was far more than a single image and it’s opposite.

He was a talented artist. A witty companion.

A passionate lover. And so much more besides.

And Matty… Matty could see his reflection in Warren’s eyes, and knew good and well that such a man would not have fallen in love with a creature who was no more than image and opposite, either.

No more than urchin or detective. There was more to Matty too.

The trouble was, he wasn’t quite sure what that was yet.

“Warren,” he said at last. “Can I see the picture you did of me? The first time we came here. Surely, you’ve finished it by now.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I suspect I might learn something from it.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Warren muttered. He took Matty’s hand from his cheek and kissed the fingers. “But seeing as I’ve been caught out already, I suppose there’s no harm in it now.”

Warren fetched the sketchbook and brought it back to the bed. It hadn’t been opened today, eagerness overriding any notion of sitting still when they closed the door behind them.

“I’ve already been told that even the simplest of my sketches of you give something away,” he said. “But I’ve done much more revealing ones.”

“The first one you did here,” Matty said again, leaning eagerly over the book as Warren began flipping through the many pages he’d filled since they met.

“That’s the one I want to look at. I want to see what you see, when you look at me.

I think it might…” The words were bubbling up and then tumbling over like foam from an overfilled glass before he’d even sensed they were coming.

“I don’t know if I want to stay at Scotland Yard,” he blurted suddenly.

“It’s been miserable, bloody miserable, and I stay because I can’t imagine anything else. But I wonder if…” He trailed off.

“If I had?” Warren finished for him. “Seen something else?”

Matty nodded self-consciously.

Warren grinned as if that were not a foolish or embarrassing thing to say at all. He kissed Matty’s cheek warmly, then gathered up a few pages to skip back to what they wanted. “Oh, sweetheart. Of course I do. Here, let me…”

Warren paused his flipping very suddenly and his grin faded. It would have been the right and normal thing to ask him why, but Matty, ever-tuned to a suspicious detail, saw the problem instantly:

Two pages had been torn out of the sketchbook.

Presumably, the emotionally resonant and potentially erotic ones he was looking for in the first place.

“Fuck,” Warren whispered. He looked around as if hoping the missing pages would jump out of the wardrobe and put his mind at ease. “That’s…that’s not good.”

Matty’s stomach dropped. He had not seen the pictures, but he certainly remembered posing for them. While Warren had been working on a socially-appropriate version for the showcase, it seemed both versions were missing.

“How not good is it?” he asked.

“Well…not that bad.” He nodded at the rather salacious painting over the mantel. “But nothing I’m especially keen to find missing, I admit.”

“Do you know who might have taken it?”

“I’m hoping it’s just the dog again,” he joked dryly, then ran a hand down his face. “Fuck.” He threw his sketchbook to the ground. “I worked really bloody hard on those.”

Matty didn’t want to put too fine a point on it, but he’d seen enough dramatic takedowns to realize that, depending on just what those sketches looked like, they had a lot more to worry about than a bit of hard work lost. These might be blackmail-worthy documents they were talking about here.

“Warren, where do you take your sketchbook?”

“I dunno.” He ruffled a hand through his hair. “Home. Here. Class. And the pub after class. Oh, and your place.”

“Nowhere else?”

“To the bridge once, for a lark. Wanted to try out a cityscape. Found I like drawing people better, though, so I didn’t go back…” Warren flipped around in the book again. “Maybe I ripped these ones out by accident, when I meant to rip out the ones I’d done of the river.”

“That’s…a hopeful notion.”

“I don’t know who else would do it.” He went pensive. “I’ll ask my brother. Maybe he did it to protect me? Or to protect our mother from finding it? That sounds the most likely,” he concluded, mostly to himself. Not very likely, though, based on the waver in his voice.

Matty went through the locations again in his mind. Home. Here. Class. The pub after class. Matty’s place. The bridge.

Here—the Fox—was the least likely location for the theft. The sketchbook was left here only behind locked doors when they went to get luncheon, doors that could only be unlocked by Warren, Mr. Forester and, apparently, Mr. Clarke.

They’d never left an unattended table at the pub—nor had they let the manager hold their sketchbooks for them, thank God—and the bridge seemed doubtful for the same reason, especially once Warren found that he had indeed ripped out those drawings he didn’t like.

That left home, class, and Matty’s place.