“I have, yes.” His eyes went from Fred to the adults around the table. All were now listening to the conversation taking place between Grayson, Fred, and Matilda.
“Have you been shot or stabbed?” Matilda asked.
“Both.”
“Where on your body?” Fred asked.
“I was shot in my side, and stabbed in the forearm,” Gray said quickly. He didn’t want to continue this discussion, but he also didn’t want to ignore the girls. Manners, Ellen thought, like the Nightingales, he’d been raised with them being ruthlessly adhered to.
“Ouch. I bet that hurt. Can you show us the scar?” Fred asked.
“No. I don’t think that’s appropriate.”
They really should intervene, Ellen thought, and yet she knew that like her, the other adults were interested in learning more about Gray.
“Not the one on your side, silly, the one on your forearm,” Matilda said.
“We have no issues with you removing your jacket.” Alex waved his hand at Gray. “They’re used to shirt sleeves. We’re only wearing ours because we’d just returned home.”
“I don’t really think—”
“Are you frightened it will scare us?” Matilda asked. “Because I dissected a mouse the other day.”
Gray looked at Ellen, and she nodded. “They are bloodthirsty these three. The mouse was also found dead first, Detective Fletcher. Have no fear they killed it.”
His smile was strained.
“Girls, that is enough. Gray has no wish to show you. Perhaps you can respect his choices?” Aunt Ivy said.
Fred pulled up the sleeve of her dress. “I got this one when I fell out of the tree that Leo told me not to climb.”
Ellen remembered that day. She’d come running at the screams and had seen the blood.
“Why is it you want to see my scar?” Gray looked at the little girls.
“We weren’t allowed to ask a lot of questions once,” Fred said softly, but Ellen and her brothers heard. “Now that we can, if one comes to us, we ask it.”
Ellen gulped down the sudden sting of tears. She cuddled Lottie closer.
“I’ll show you then, but don’t blame me if you get upset and start shrieking,” he teased them.
“We won’t,” they both said.
She then watched Gray take out his cuff link and roll up his sleeve, exposing a muscled forearm. The scar was about five inches long and ran from his wrist to halfway up his forearm.
“That’s not an old scar,” Alex said.
“No” was his only reply.
It was red and raised and must have caused him considerable pain. Ellen wondered how it had happened.
“I’m sorry, that must have hurt,” Fred said. “Was the man who did this arrested?”
Gray nodded. “He was and is still in prison.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Not as much as it used to.”
