Page 47 of To Sketch a Scandal (Lucky Lovers of London #4)

“Is there some reason you cannot see them somewhere else?” she asked. “Can’t they come here? I would like to meet them.”

“You wouldn’t like them,” he said. “Trust me.”

She paused. For a moment, he figured she’d argue. But then she nodded.

“I see,” she said slowly, knowingly. “Are they artist friends, then?”

Warren did a double take. He did not think that his mother was using that term as some sort of euphemism on purpose; she was no sailor with context for the sort of life he and friends kept, after all.

But what she said got at something. Got very close to something vital and correct that he’d never been able to broach with her.

“Yes,” he said. “I think… I think that’s an accurate way to describe them.”

She nodded again, pursing her lips. “Your father had his artist friends, too,” she said, looking into the distance like she could see that old pack of bohemians at the edge of her vision field. “And you’re right.” She chuckled. “I didn’t like them at all.”

Warren laughed too, a sort of nervous burst. “Artist friends?”

“Don’t you remember?” she said, squinting like she was hoping to see her memories more clearly. “The ones who smoked, and drank, and dressed oddly.”

Once she put it that way, Warren did remember that his father would go out with companions from the school he attended when he was ashore, and that occasionally those fellows would stop by for a drink and closed-door conversations about art and literature.

Warren was too young to join in on those, but Harry had done so once or twice, before such visits were ended for good.

“I suppose I didn’t think of them that way,” Warren said. “I didn’t know them well.”

“For good reason. You think that was an accident?” she huffed.

“But they were always polite to me, and they made him happy, and he didn’t become worse for their presence so far as I could tell.

He came all the way here to study his passion; it only made sense that he’d find fellows of a like mind eventually, same as I found my companions.

So.” She shrugged. “What do you do? I loved him as he was, and so did they, so I suppose we had that in common. They didn’t even come over that much, since I drew the line at the smoking, you know, and some of them could hardly go an hour without it. ”

Warren nearly laughed, thinking of some of his own friends. Noah in particular would struggle.

“Mother, are you saying you want me to bring my friends over to annoy you senseless?”

“I’m saying, Warren, that if you did…” She glanced down the hall. “Your brother has ensured we have a nice parlor for entertaining again. It would be very odd indeed if you didn’t have friends this dear over to visit sometimes.” She paused, then put a finger up. “But no smoking.”

“That will certainly limit the crowd, as you say.”

“Good.”

There was a tipping point, when Warren climbed the ladder and lit each candle in the Fox’s chandelier, when the slow, one-by-one creep of the light seemed to finally sweep the room over with its warm glow.

The memories he had of the evenings his father went out or huddled with other artists in his study were suddenly brightened just like that, as if what his mother had said was the single candle that made all the difference in his vision.

His father’s life outside the family might not have been secret or risky, but it had been as interesting and vibrant and vital as Warren’s.

He hadn’t ever thought of his hardworking father as eccentric, but perhaps he had been…

Certainly he had been! He’d been born well-off and well educated in India.

It took some amount of eccentricity to leave all that to study painting of all things, didn’t it?

And, to be fair to his mother, it took at least a touch of eccentricity herself to be willing to marry and start a very new life with such a man in the first place.

It wasn’t an obvious thing about her, but if it weren’t there, well, there would be no London and no Curious Fox and English bachelorhood or any of it.

They’d be living a very different life, with very different conversations to be had.

“Mother,” Warren said. “While I stand by the assertion that you wouldn’t like most of my friends, there’s one I think you’d get on with rather well. He’s very polite, and hardly smokes at all. I’d like to introduce him to you, if I could.”

“The one you meet up to draw with?” she asked. “The one in your pictures?”

Warren swallowed hard, but there was no indication she’d spotted in those pictures quite the same things that Harry and Anjali had. No indication that she ever would, though he supposed he’d cross that bridge if he ever came to it. He nodded.

“The one you argued with?” she said knowingly.

He nodded again.

“Well, patch things up and bring him by, then,” she said. She gave a smile that was wistful and even a bit wily around the edges. “Trust me when I say, a polite artist who doesn’t smoke much is a rare companion worth keeping around for as long as you can.”

* * *

Post held a certain gravity for Warren, after years of nearly ritualistic combings over for news of Father or Harry. When he saw an important letter, it tended to leave an impression.

Thus, even when he woke up the next morning, he found he remembered everything about Mr. Barrows’s note to Matty. He remembered that Wednesdays were best. That mornings were preferred.

Most importantly, perhaps, he remembered the address.

He didn’t expect, with no planning and no warning, to get there at precisely the same time as Matty did.

He’d be early, he figured, and have to explain himself.

Or else late, which would be easier. But amazingly enough, Matty was just climbing the tidy steps to the front door when he arrived at Mr. Barrows’s little house.

Matty wasn’t wearing the careworn costume he donned to class, but a tidy gray suit, a black overcoat, and a tall hat.

For a second, Warren thought he looked so fine and put together that he must have managed to get his head on straight without any help.

But the longer he watched, the less likely that seemed.

Matty wasn’t knocking. Wasn’t ringing the bell. He was just standing there, staring at the door, completely frozen. Considering his state of mind when last they spoke, it was reasonable to hesitate.

Until, of course, it wasn’t.

I stood there staring at it for what felt like an hour.

I turned around and left.

Warren realized what Matty was about to do.

He’d done it when he considered going back to his mum.

Nearly done it again at the first sketching class, when he and Warren so literally bumped into each other.

But he could not do it this time. He was going to have to face whatever he found behind this door, and if he could not do it on his own, well. That was alright.

Warren went up the stairs just as Matty turned with a wild look in his eye, about to bolt. He had a lot of momentum, but this time around, Warren wasn’t as blindsided by the attempted escape and avoided the collision.

Matty blinked down at him from a step above.

“I’ve gone mad at last,” he said.

“Pretty much,” said Warren with a grin. “That’s the conclusion I came to last night, anyway. That you’re off your rocker. Scotland Yard’s got nothing to do with it, mate. And you know it.”

“But what are you doing here?”

“I figured someone off his rocker could use a little help getting back on it,” Warren said.

“I’m sorry I left in such a hurry. I was more worried about how silly I was going to look if you were right than I was about the fact that what you were saying didn’t make sense.

You were clearly having a hard time with leaving your work, and I don’t think I should have left you in that state. I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” said Matty, that sort of polite blankness on his features again. “Well. I—I’m sorry I was off my rocker.”

“Are you still?”

He nodded, and perfectly calmly said, “Warren, I am in a state , believe it or not. A real bloody state.”

Warren came to meet him at the top of the steps and took his arm. “I’ll face it with you, then. Alright?”

“It will be very rude to bring a second guest like this, unannounced.”

“It was rude of him to send you such a vague note when you’ve got so much on your mind,” Warren countered.

“You say you’ve been working together, what, ten, twelve years?

He ought to know better. And if I’m wrong?

If it’s vague because you’re right about the sort of news he’s got?

In that case, it involves me, don’t it? I should hear it myself rather than risk you clamming up again, eh? ”

Matty’s eyes had never looked clearer or more grateful.

Warren wanted to kiss him or at least bring their heads softly together, but neither of those was happening gracefully on a nice little stoop in the middle of the day and both of them in nice hats.

So he squeezed Matty’s arm and Matty squeezed back, then he knocked on the door at last.

* * *

Warren had forgotten until this very moment that he’d once met Detective Barrows.

The same upright, narrow, white-haired man who got up from an easy chair in the sitting room to greet them had posed as a potential buyer of The Curious Fox’s property one soggy afternoon last year.

Warren had not, perhaps, been on his very best behavior that day.

“Uh-oh,” he said under his breath.

Matty glanced at him. “What?”

But there was no time to explain that, due to circumstances that were really very reasonable at the time, he’d perhaps…

sworn a bit at Detective Barrows when they met, and maybe-just-maybe spat on the ground near his feet when the other fellow showing him the property had crossed a line in the way he spoke to Warren.

Since Detective Barrows had, apparently, gotten that rude wanker arrested in the end, Warren supposed he got a pass for not curbing the arsehole’s speech at the time.

Didn’t mean Warren was going to get a pass from Barrows, though, for acting…well…the way he did when home was behind him and it was the expectations of the alleys, rather than his mother, that guided the words he selected in the heat of the moment.

Maybe he wouldn’t remember Warren…but no. Even as he was greeting Matty, his sharp eyes—unfairly sharp for his age, really—were taking Warren in.

“And who’s this?” he asked Matty, like he already knew.

Matty, blessedly innocent of the awkwardness, patted Warren on the back like he couldn’t be prouder to be introducing him.

“This is my dearest friend,” he said, saying it like Barrows knew and approved of all his vices and would hopefully understand the gravity behind the words. “Mr. Warren Bakshi.”

Warren extended a hand because he had to. Barrows took it slowly, appraising him. His recognition was obvious.

“Lovely to meet you,” Barrows said, a bit too politely. “Matthew, did you say how you met Mr. Bakshi?”

“In the portrait class I’ve been taking,” he said.

Barrows softened, and next thing Warren knew, a very warm sort of smile crossed his face. “Well, isn’t that nice?” he said. “Glad to hear it. That’s a very noble pursuit, Mr. Bakshi. Much worse things a bloke could be doing with his time, eh?”

Barrows clearly took it to mean he’d left The Curious Fox behind. Warren let him have it. He’d already come out on top with one former detective nosing into his business—risking full honesty with another might push his luck past the limit.

So he kept that little detail to himself as they got settled into the sitting room with their tea and a warm fire.

Barrows’s home was a sleepy place, Barrows himself seeming like the sort of bloke with enough energy left in his bones that he’d start to resent his retirement eventually, but who was so new to the slower pace that he was still finding the novelty in it.

He talked about the housekeeper’s idiosyncrasies and the new grandchild who would be born to him around the same time as Warren’s niece or nephew was expected.

He told them all about this particular tea they were drinking, looking at Warren a bit too much as he did so, as if being Indian magically meant he knew more about tea leaves than he did about gin.

All the while, Warren felt very strongly the determined retirement around the fellow, and was trying to stay awake, whilst poor Matty sat on the very edge of his seat, hardly moving.

He had not even mentioned, yet, that he’d left Scotland Yard, letting Barrows chatter on and clearly waiting for his world to come crashing down.

“Forgive me, Mr. Barrows,” said Warren at last, unable to take Matty’s tension a second longer. “But what news did you call Mr. Shaw here to discuss? He’s been worrying over it, as you might guess, and I think by now we’re both very curious as to what it was.”

Barrows looked between the two of them, confused. “But I’ve already told you,” he said. “That’s what we’ve been talking about this whole time.”

Matty sat up even straighter. “What?”

“The new grandchild, of course,” he chuckled. “What did you think?”

Warren nudged Matty. See? Told you you were off your rocker.