“It’s a beautiful day for a ride,” Ramsey added.
Gray grunted a reply.
It was early, but a favorite time of day for the cousins. Ramsey, for all his protestations that he did not greet the day until noon, was in fact false. He rode most mornings and was as cheery before the sun rose fully in the sky as he was as it sank.
“Do you ride often, Gray?”
“No.”
“Why? You love to ride,” Ramsey said from beside him. His horse was a big-boned gray who looked ready to take a bite out of anyone or anything that came too near. Luckily, he seemed to like Gray’s bay mare.
“I work, Ram. It takes up a lot of my time.”
“Or you don’t have anyone to ride with because you dislike people and have no friends.” His cousin tipped his hat to a man trotting by.
“I like people.”
“Who do you like?” Ramsey asked. “No wait, let me guess. You’re particularly fond of Miss Nightingale.”
“No more than anyone who is aiding me in an investigation,” Gray lied.
“You forget I have known you all my life. I can see a lie from ten feet, cousin, plus there is the kiss you shared.”
“Shut up,” Gray muttered.
He’d dreamt of her last night. The feel of her pressed to his body, his lips on hers. He’d never felt about a woman the way he did about Ellen Nightingale, and that terrified him. Terrified but at the same time excited him.
Gray had always believed he’d spend his life alone, working until he no longer could, but Ellen had changed that way of thinking. She made him believe in the future and that she would be part of it, but as that thought scared him too, he pushed it aside for now.
“It is all right to admire someone, Gray. Even love them.”
He turned so fast he nearly fell off his horse. His heart pounded suddenly, and his hands were sweating inside his leather gloves.
“I don’t love her,” he wheezed out. Gray had not even allowed himself to acknowledge that yet, so why was Ramsey speaking that way?
“Right. Well, I must have got that wrong. But if that is the case it means I can call on her and ask if she would go driving with me.”
“I will kill you if you do.”
He felt Ramsey’s eyes on the side of his face, but Gray kept his forward between his horse’s ears.
“As you should if you care for her.”
“I don’t know what I feel, Ram.” He went for honesty. “For so long I have just lived my life as I thought I wished. Solitary. I love what I do, and my needs are met. I want for nothing.” Except now he thought that was no longer the truth.
“What of friendship and companionship? It is not healthy to live without that, Gray. You have turned into a bitter man. In fact, you are more like the men in your family you ran away from than you were before you left.”
“I beg your pardon, that is absolutely not true.” But even as he protested, Gray knew Ram had been right. He was a cold man. He’d shut himself away from people because the ones he had formed a bond with had hurt him, died, or left. Which made him sound as pathetic as he’d told Ellen she was.
“Absolutely is the truth.”
“It just happened, Ram. It wasn’t a deliberate choice but one I made because I felt it was for the best.”
“But now I, your favorite cousin, am back, and that is going to change. I have great hopes for these wonderful Nightingales also if they change you.”
“Her eldest brother would see me thrown into the fires of hell.”
“That’s eldest brothers for you. However, I may have been absent from society forever, but I did go to my father’s club two nights ago. I was, of course, welcomed with open arms once they were exposed to my charm and wit. I then spent a wonderful night hearing all the latest gossip. Old and new.”
