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She gasped. How could she forget? She looked at Ralph, whose face was set in grim lines. “Are you truly worried?”
Ralph shook his head. “No.” Then he paused. “I don’t know. But it’s better to be prepared.”
“You will make a difference in keeping us safe beyond our footmen?”
Ralph gave a quick nod. “I will.”
“Because you’re a fighter?”
Marcus cleared his throat as Ralph grimaced and then turned toward. “That and other reasons.”
She shook her head. He’d been asked to investigate the old earl’s death and now he was their protector against highwaymen. “What other reasons?” Why must they endlessly speak in circles where she received no real answers? “Please.”
A muscle in Ralph’s cheek twitched. “Wyatt and I…” He scrubbed at his unruly hair as his gaze met and held hers again. Something in his eyes made her pulse flutter wildly as she swallowed down a lump. “We are the Bushy Hero.”
The world spun and she grabbed the side of the carriage. She’d not repeat yesterday. She wouldn’t. “You can’t be serious,” she croaked.
Ralph’s hand shot out to hold her arm. “Clara?”
“You…you are the Bushy Hero?” Suddenly all sorts of details clicked into place. The way he’d mitigated the unruly men at the inn with barely a glance. His comment about the Bushy Hero giving information to the queen. Him being dispatched with Her Majesty’s seal.
“I am.” Ralph did reach for her hand then, tentatively holding her fingers in his.
But other thoughts just wouldn’t square in her mind. The hero she’d been distantly infatuated with was the same one who’d held her in his arms and kissed her? The one she’d developed feelings for? The man she was falling in love with? “You’d better tell me everything.”
Tell her everything?
Ralph scrubbed a hand down his face. Where did he begin? Her brother was listening but now hardly seemed like the time to hold back.
Did he share about his father? About the abuse he and Wyatt had faced? How when Wyatt was attacked two and half years ago, he’d decided that the streets of London needed to be safer? That somehow, both of them struggled with what it meant to be a man when they’d had a tyrant for a father? Perhaps he did.
He started in halting words, telling her how Wyatt had been younger and smaller and he’d needed Ralph’s protection.
If Clara wondered why he’d begun his story there, she didn’t ask as she threaded her fingers through his. He trotted into the attack on Wyatt outside the theater and how Wyatt had decided to train to become the Bushy Hero. “Years of being a victim at our father’s hands and then those of the thieves left him wanting justice, I think. And, perhaps, to be a protector.”
Clara covered her mouth. “How did you end up involved?”
“The same way I always do with Wyatt. He wanted to protect the city, I was still protecting him. I trained him and when he took on a few situations that were more than he could handle alone—”
“You helped.”
“I did.”
Clara’s eyes shone with something that filled him with just a bit of hope. “You always do, don’t you? Help the people you care about.”
It was the truth.
“And what about Her Majesty and Kinross?”
“You know better than anyone about Priscilla’s ogre of a cousin, Eugene?”
Clara’s eyes scrunched as she looked at him. “Of course.”
“The Bushy Hero could turn in thieves without anyone questioning his right to stop crime, but when it came to a member of the peerage, we couldn’t just turn in Eugene anonymously. He was an earl, after all, even if he was an impostor. Either Wyatt or myself had to come forward.”
Clara gasped. “You…you turned yourself in as the Bushy Hero and then had Eugene prosecuted to spare Wyatt!”
“To be clear, I didn’t give Wyatt a choice. He was about to marry Priscilla and—”
