Page 46 of To Sketch a Scandal (Lucky Lovers of London #4)

Warren realized his mistake when he got home.

“Well, fuck me,” he whispered to the cupboard door as he unfastened his coat and found the scarf missing.

He was angry with Matty for being a bloody dolt, but he hadn’t meant to send quite that harsh a message.

He wanted time to think, not to completely reject something that had seemed so certain a few short hours ago.

He hesitated with his coat, considering keeping it on. It would be a bother to go back, but the thought of Matty reading into such a mindless lapse made him sick.

“Warren, is that you?”

Mother came into the foyer. She was in one of the fine new day dresses she’d not had to make herself for the first time in ages, draped over in deep blue fabric with gold stitching along the edges.

She was smiling very wide, but looked tired—Warren always fancied the gray streaks in her hair looked grayer when she was overdoing it, perhaps reflecting off some minute change in her complexion.

She started trying to help him out of his coat instantly.

“Come on!” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you. There’s news .”

Mother spent more time with Anjali these days, and certainly knew what the news was by now.

Everyone did. While Anjali was clearly of a mind not to announce inauspiciously early, she wasn’t very good at hiding it, either.

If the odd pickles hadn’t given her away, the fact that she’d suddenly started putting inexpertly-draped saris over her trousers last week without any apparent reason was suspicious (and also a little concerning, near the stove…)

“News?” Warren looked over his shoulder at the door he’d been considering heading right back out of. “Now?”

“ Now .” Mother had him out of his coat before he knew it, putting it away. “Mrs. Ahuja and the others from the old place even came by to hear it, isn’t that lovely? I know you’ve missed them so much, you mention it almost every time we have the new neighbors over.”

“But…” Could they have picked more dreadful timing?

“Are we sure it’s a good day for it?” he tried, desperately searching for some reason not to have this happen right fucking now.

“She’s been waiting for a reason, you know.

It should be the right time. The right day.

And this sort of news? I mean, we wouldn’t want—”

Mother pursed her lips so hard it stopped Warren’s own fully in their tracks.

“If my English bachelor son cared in the slightest about such things,” she said slowly, arms crossed, “then he would already know it’s a perfectly ‘good day’ for news.”

She had him there.

“Can I have an hour?” he asked. “I’m back early as it is. You can’t have been expecting me yet—”

“Yes, but you’re here now,” said Mother. “And so is everyone else. What could you have possibly forgotten out there that’s more important than this?”

There was absolutely no way in the world to explain why forgetting a scarf at his art class chum’s house was important. On the surface, of course, it was nothing.

And he would have to hope Matty trusted him enough to see it that way. Because he couldn’t think of anything that would reasonably allow him to put this off.

“Alright,” he said, disheartened but without any reasonable option to resolve these conflicting tensions. “Go on. I’ll be right in.”

He told himself he’d go back to set things right with Matty once the news was shared, but he must have known deep down how impossible that would be.

It wasn’t just their old housemates who had come over to celebrate, but what seemed like at least half the Punjabi population of London by the time all was said and done, and plenty of their new neighbors as well.

There’d been no wedding for Harry and Anjali, after all.

The desire to celebrate them at last was voracious.

The half of Warren that walked this world quite happily congratulated his brother and sister, watched the mother-to-be open gifts of sweets and bangles, caught up with people he hadn’t seen in ages, and ate far more food than was frankly reasonable.

It was so joyous an occasion, he even tolerated a few introductions to granddaughters.

One was so charming that within the context of celebrating his brother’s wife and child, some small part of him wondered whether he might not be one of those fellows who could make it all work somehow after all.

That thought, however, faded quickly once the eating and singing did and people started heading home.

Natural, he supposed, to get caught up, but his path was his own and being at the center of a day like this was simply never going to be part of it.

He was to the side, and as things became quiet, he was comfortable there again—bringing Mother her tonic and a last helping of pudding, tidying up alongside the housekeeper now that there was no one to judge him for it.

He certainly wasn’t missing a wife in this peaceful moment.

Though he was, admittedly, missing Matty.

It was stupid. Even as companions, which was all they could ever admit to being, there was hardly a human out there who would have fit in less at his house tonight.

And yet Matty was so adaptable, so game, so unshakable when he set his mind to something, that Warren had to wonder if his presence might have made a nice addition.

Even if he’d spent the party in a daze of not understanding three-quarters of what was said, it would certainly be nice to have him here now, as a peaceful night settled on the household.

Mother was on the sofa, changed into a warm robe with blanket on top, enjoying the last of her pudding. As Warren returned from dropping the final batch of plates in the kitchen, she patted the seat beside her. His seat, back in the days of opening the mail together.

“So,” she said. “What was on your mind earlier? When you thought you might leave all this?”

“I’m glad I didn’t,” he said quickly. “You were right. It was—”

“I didn’t ask if you were glad,” she said. “I saw you; I don’t doubt you would have hated to miss such an important day. I want to know what could even have tempted you.”

Warren took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Harry had warned him a while ago now that Mother would start asking this sort of thing soon.

“I had an argument with a friend,” he admitted.

“He was in the wrong but… I think I overreacted.” As he said it aloud, he felt very certain it was true.

He remembered that little note, every detail down to the address on it.

While the missing drawings were of concern, there was no indication that Matty was being investigated, and nothing Barrows said really changed that. In fact…

In fact, he had a sinking feeling, now that he was home and his mind was clear, that he might very well know which prat had done it in the first place.

And that prat’s motivation was likely not as dastardly as Matty was imagining.

If Warren had kept his head and had a real conversation rather than fretting once again about what this might do to his reputation at the Fox, he might have figured it out before he went and left Matty with the impression that he wasn’t coming back.

“Anyway,” he went on, even more regretful than before. “I realized my mistake when I got home. Wanted to set it right before we had to go to sleep with such bitter feelings.”

“Is he a friend from your club?”

“Um. Sort of.”

“Will you tell me, now?” she asked. It wasn’t harsh and was not a demand. Just a real, gentle question. “Where you’ve been working?”

It was a real tragedy, that he couldn’t.

He wished there were some way, that she were half-pirate like Harry and able to handle such a truth.

She could not, though. At least not now, not under these circumstances.

Maybe that would change someday, but in the meantime, lying so extravagantly wasn’t serving them, either.

“It’s not White’s,” he said. And she laughed, because of course she knew that.

The positive response spurred him on. “It’s not Brooks’s, either.

It’s nothing you’ll have heard of, actually.

No prestige whatsoever. Due to its…location near the theaters,” he said, deciding that was about as close as he could get to the reality of the place, “it does very brisk business with a rough crowd, and I was always able to bring in more money there than I might have elsewhere. I’m also quite good, actually.

At my job. I get a lot of appreciation. It’s not a fancy place, but I know how to make the gentlemen feel like it is. ”

Mother smiled, and it made him sad. What she thought he was being appreciated for—his helpfulness, his ability to run an economical ship, his comfort with blending flavors—probably wasn’t very accurate most of the time.

In fact, he let most of the patrons go on thinking he was lazy.

Made them feel all the more special when they got good service and a saucy wink.

“You should have told me from the start,” she scolded.

“I wanted you to be able to tell the neighbors something to be proud of,” he said. “Squeezing coin out of drunk actors doesn’t quite fit the bill.”

She grinned even wider. “Well, that’s fair enough,” she teased. “But you could have told me, and we could have gone in on the fib together.”

“I’m sorry. I really believed it was in your best interest to keep the details to myself.”

“Why do you stay now, then?” she asked. “If it’s as you say, what draw is there?”

“My friends,” he said. While there were details that couldn’t cross the barrier of his worlds, the honest truth of it was simple and universal.

“I have friends there, and so I enjoy myself when I go into work. I didn’t want to give it up.

Not with everything else changing around me so fast. There may not be a reason to keep it, but there was no reason to quit, either. So, I stayed.”