The Pursuits of Lord Kit Cavanaugh

by Stephanie Laurens

  “Home.” She waved farther along King Street. “I live not far away, and with the school ready but shut, there’s nothing more I need to do today.”

  He waved her on. “I’ll see you home.”

  Sylvia hesitated for only a second, then inclined her head in acceptance. “Thank you.” Were this London, any gentleman of his class would make the same offer, and any lady with her head on her shoulders would acquiesce. Viewed in that light, him escorting her home didn’t mean anything beyond simple courtesy, something she suspected that, in him, was ingrained.

  Side by side, they strolled on along King Street, the soft sunshine of the afternoon laying gently across their shoulders.

  He’d slipped his hands into his greatcoat pockets and was looking down at the pavement before them. “I also want to thank you—and the school—for the chance to reach out to the sort of craftsmen Wayland and I most need to contact. That was a bonus.”

  Smiling at his earnestness, she looked ahead. “I think all associated with the school would say that you’ve earned any advantage the school community can hand you.”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t that much—it was easy for me to do.” He glanced briefly at her. “It was you who showed me the way—who opened my door and laid the opportunity at my feet. I just picked it up.”

  She suppressed a snort, but there was no real way to counter that argument.

  She wasn’t even sure she wanted to. It was close enough to the truth, yet...

  She was starting to realize he had a habit of self-deprecation, of making light of what he did—often, it seemed, because he was wealthy and matters were easy for him to arrange. Because his assistance cost him nothing beyond money he could readily afford.

  But was it correct to discount his contribution purely because it was easy for him to make?

  She suspected her father would say not and, instead, maintain that the actions of men possessed the same intrinsic value regardless of wealth.

  They reached the corner of King Street and Back Street, and she waved to their left. “It’s this way.”

  As they strolled on, she asked, “Have you seen Rand and Felicia recently?”

  He nodded. “After the wedding, I stayed at Raventhorne Abbey, and they visited several times—their last visit was just before I left to come here.” He glanced at her face. “They’re both well.” After a moment, he asked, “Does Felicia know you live here—in Bristol?”

  She blinked, then, considering the question, frowned. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve mentioned the school—she knows all about that and my association with it—but I’m not sure I’ve actually told her I’ve removed to Bristol myself.” She glanced briefly his way and met his caramel eyes. “I do know she sent news of her wedding to my home in the country—my father sent it on.”

  “And where is your home in the country?”

  “Saltford. It’s a small town on the Bath Road between Bristol and Bath. My father has the living there.” She glanced at him. “Do you have a house in the country you call home?”

  He looked ahead. “Not as such. The Abbey is now Ryder and Mary’s home and purely a place to visit.”

  “No house in London?” She imagined a London rakehell of his wealth would definitely have a house in town.

  “I used to share lodgings with Rand, but now... If I want to stay in town, I’ll just use my room in Raventhorne House in Mount Street.” His lips twisted wryly. “Truth to tell, I avoid London as much as I can.”

  “You do?” That surprised her. “Why?”

  He looked at her, meeting her gaze. “The more pertinent question would be: Why wouldn’t I?” When, at a loss, she blinked at him, he elaborated, “There’s nothing that attracts me in London, much less holds my interest. No yacht-building. No sailing of that sort.” He shrugged and looked at the pavement again. “Nothing I fancy.”

  Nothing he fancied? Sylvia might have thought he was pulling her leg, but he looked and sounded utterly sincere and combined with what she’d seen of him and learned of him that day...

  She was starting to suspect her earlier opinion of Kit Cavanaugh had been not just inaccurate but comprehensively in error.

  Which raised the tantalizing prospect of who the man beside her truly was—what manner of man he actually was.

  Pondering that, she gestured to the left. “My lodging house is this way, on the far side of the park.”

  He turned with her, then asked, “Tell me what you know of the Dock Company.”

  That didn’t take long, but his subsequent questions about the city, about the atmosphere now that, with the advent of larger, heavier ships, the dock work was shifting downriver, displayed an inherent grasp of what made communities tick and prosper.

  “So,” he said, “the mayor and the city council are stable and entrenched, but are floundering regarding the adjustments necessary to meet the challenges confronting the city.”

  She tipped her head. “That’s a reasonable summation. As yet, there’s been no major public protests, but from time to time, the mood turns rather ugly—or should I say dejected?”

  He nodded in understanding. “The latter sounds nearer the mark.”

  “This is it.” Sylvia paused outside the gate of the terrace house in which she lodged and turned to face the man she had for years regarded as her romantic nemesis; thankfully, he would never know. She put out her hand. “Thank you for your escort.”

  He looked down at her hand—and for an instant, she was sure a hint of the wolf she’d seen in London peeked through—but then he grasped her fingers, engulfing them in his much larger hand, and gently shook. He caught her eyes and smiled—a charming, Lord Kit Cavanaugh smile. “The pleasure of your company was thanks enough.” He released her hand and stepped back, faultlessly executing a graceful bow that consigned every other man in Bristol to the shade. “A good afternoon to you, Miss Buckleberry. No doubt we’ll meet again soon.”

  With a lingering smile and a nod, he turned and walked away.

  Sylvia watched him go, amazed by the fact that, against odds she’d thought insurmountable, she and the man behind Kit Cavanaugh’s handsome face had reached a comfortable, even companionable, accord.

  * * *

  Kit reached the warehouse before eight o’clock the next morning, eager to meet the men Wayland had hired to commence work on transforming the building into the Cavanaugh Yachts workshop—their next step in creating the yacht-building enterprise they wanted their company to be.

  Wayland was already there, waiting outside and as eager as Kit to welcome their new employees; Wayland leaned against the door as Kit unlocked it. “I concentrated on finding the best possible foreman, and I think I succeeded in that. Mulligan has experience from clipper days and has even worked on several yachts. He understood everything I spoke of, which you must admit is encouraging.”

  Kit grinned as he hauled the doors open. Most men found Wayland’s descriptions and directions difficult to interpret, rendered in specialized jargon as they were.

  Together, he and Wayland propped the doors wide, then returned to stand shoulder to shoulder on the threshold, looking out.

  “And then,” Wayland said, rocking on his heels, “I asked Mulligan to help me select four carpenters to make up a senior team to work under him.” Wayland’s grin grew wider. “Best decision I’ve made in years. We had the right men in a trice. All were out of work thanks to the switch to iron ships, and they’re as eager to leap into yacht-building as we are.”

  “Excellent!” Kit saw five large men rolling along the lane toward them. “What wages did you offer?”

  Wayland named a sum for the carpenters and a larger figure for Mulligan.

  “Fair, indeed generous, but not outrageous.” Kit tipped his head in approval. “Good work.”

  Wayland shrugged. “If all goes well, these men will be the core of our workforce,
and given their experience, it seemed wise to make them feel valued.”

  Kit nodded as the five men reached them.

  Wayland bade the five welcome, shook their hands, then introduced Kit as “Kit Cavanaugh, the majority partner in the business.”

  Kit offered his hand as well. To Kit, his title was neither here nor there, and better the men got to know him before they learned of it; in his experience—and Wayland’s—people held a lot of preconceived notions about the nobility that he would be happy to avoid if he could. He echoed Wayland’s welcome and added his hopes that, through developing Cavanaugh Yachts into a thriving business, they would all prosper.

  “That’s certainly our hope, sir,” Mulligan rumbled. The largest of the group, he was a heavily built man of indeterminate age with a virtually bald pate circled by a narrow tonsure of graying brown hair. His features were florid—as were those of all the men—but not in the way of men who overindulged in drink. Rather, their ruddy complexions had come courtesy of wind whipping off water and working outdoors.

  The other men were Shaw, Hodgkins, Miller, and Boots. Once the introductions and welcomes were behind them, Kit said, “I’ll pay you this afternoon for your work today, at our agreed rates. I’m hoping that by next Friday, we’ll have a secretary in place, and she’ll disburse all wages every Friday afternoon.”

  The men nodded, and Mulligan said, “Thank ye, sir—that’s good to know.”

  All five men looked eagerly, almost longingly, into the warehouse.

  Smiling, Wayland turned, spread his arms wide, and walked inside. “Right, then. This is to be a modern workshop expressly tooled to build ocean-going yachts. To that end—”

  Kit stood back and watched and listened as Wayland described his vision of the workshop, with words and gestures bringing offices and hull-frames and a gantry of pulleys to life. Mulligan asked a sensible question, which caused Wayland to pause and explain. Emboldened by the easy way Wayland responded, several of the others posed further questions. Kit grinned. It was clear Wayland had, indeed, gathered a group of men who would form a tight-knit crew and work with him and Kit in transforming their dream into a reality.

  At the end of his exposition, Wayland showed the men the new tools he’d assembled and arranged on the floor along the far side of the warehouse, then pointed out the stacks of timbers he’d begged and pleaded and managed to have delivered late yesterday—solid beams for the gantries, and pieces of various sizes for supports, frames, and struts.

  The men pored over the tools like children on Christmas Day.

  Wayland whipped out his notebook and asked what else they would need.

  Several requests came for certain types of wood files, and two smaller saws and more vises. Wayland jotted it all down.

  Then Mulligan, who, with the others, had been crouching and examining the tools, rose and, planting his massive hands on his hips, turned to Wayland. “Seems like the very first things we need to build are racks to hold all these tools. Can’t keep them on the floor like this—they’ll end damaged.”

  “Ah.” Wayland hesitated. Kit knew his partner had assumed they would immediately start on framing the offices, but then Wayland nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. So—tool racks first. Then”—he looked at Mulligan—“I thought we could rough-in the frames for the offices before starting work on the gantry. Once we have that up, two men could continue working on the offices while the rest of us make a start on the frame for our first keel.”

  Mulligan mulled, then nodded. “That should work.” He looked at the others. “Right, lads. Let’s get to it.”

  Wayland had already draped his coat over a pile of wood closer to the door.

  Kit shrugged out of his coat, laid it with Wayland’s, and started rolling up his sleeves.

  “So,” Wayland said, also rolling up his sleeves, “you have six men to put to work.”

  Mulligan was bent over, sorting timber. At that, he looked up. “Six?” Then he saw Wayland’s and Kit’s preparations, and his brows rose. “You two want to work in with us?”

  “If you’ll have us,” Kit replied. “We each have two hands, and both of us have some small experience in carpentry.”

  Along with the other men, Mulligan stared at them for a moment, then Mulligan snorted. “I won’t say no—we’ve a lot to do, and you two are the bosses, after all. But”—his eyes twinkled—“p’rhaps you’d better leave the hammering to us. I suspect you’ll need your thumbs.”

  Once the chuckles from the men and the resigned looks from Kit and Wayland had faded, they got to work on two racks for the tools.

  Within half an hour, Mulligan and the team had forgotten about Kit and Wayland being the bosses and were treating them like apprentices, which made Wayland and Kit grin.

  Every now and then, some hopeful carpenter would turn up at the open door, and Wayland and Mulligan would go and chat to them and decide whether or not they were of the right caliber to join the workforce of Cavanaugh Yachts. Mulligan had suggested and Kit and Wayland had agreed that any employees they hired that day would start on Monday.

  “Too many cooks, otherwise,” Mulligan had said.

  After two hours’ hard work, Wayland paused, then looked at Mulligan. “Why not put these racks on wheels? Then we can move them around the hulls. I’d hope to have at least two hulls in progress at any given time, and it’s likely we’ll have another being polished off.” Wayland waved around them. “We’ve space enough for three.”

  Mulligan slowly nodded. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  They worked out the logistics, then Kit and Wayland left to purchase two sets of large iron wheels, four wheels for each rack.

  As they rolled the heavy wheels, lashed together, back to the warehouse, Wayland said, “I can barely believe we’ve actually made a start—that we’ve managed to get this far this fast and all relatively smoothly.”

  “Don’t jinx us,” Kit replied. “But yes—it’s...” He realized he was lost for words to describe the effervescent enthusiasm coursing his veins.

  “Uplifting,” Wayland supplied. “I feel positively giddy.”

  Kit laughed. They reached the cobbled lane along the Grove and had to slow, wrestling the wheels along.

  While laughing with Wayland at their efforts to keep the wheels heading more or less in the right direction, Kit was struck by how simply happy he was.

  Their enterprise was progressing step by steady step, and everything was, thus far, going well. There’d been nothing about the day that he would choose to change.

  His mind slid sideways to whether Sylvia and the school were also having a good day—their first in their new premises.

  Her intention in storming into his office on Wednesday morning hadn’t been to assist him in getting to where he now was, yet in reality, her tempestuous arrival had been a critical juncture in the evolution of Cavanaugh Yachts.

  Wayland and Mulligan had been enthused by the quality of men turning up at the workshop door, largely sent their way by connections associated with the school.

  “I hadn’t realized we had so many men who’d worked on the old ships still here,” Mulligan had said. “I’d thought a lot had moved on, but seems they’ve just been waiting and hoping.”

  They were close to having a full roster of men—all experienced hands.

  Kit couldn’t help but think that, despite her former prickliness and regardless of her intentions in storming into his office, Sylvia Buckleberry had contributed significantly to easing the path for Cavanaugh Yachts.

  CHAPTER 5

  At noon on Friday, Sylvia set out to call at the school, ostensibly to check on the state of supplies, but in reality, to see how everything was going and to reassure herself that everyone was settling into their new home.

  She felt a happy thrill on setting eyes on the hall—solid and respectable, a much bet
ter place for the school, for teaching the boys that, with education and application, they, too, could aspire to inhabit such an area.

  She opened the door and stepped inside to find lunchtime in progress—the boys seated cross-legged on the floor, munching whatever they’d brought from home and on the apples the school, through the good offices of Miss Meggs, provided. The boys were listening to Cross, who was perched on a stool and reading aloud from a boys’ adventure novel.

  All heads turned her way, and happy smiles spread across every face.

  Closing the door behind her, Sylvia smiled back. It was transparently clear that the members of her small school community were reveling in their new surrounds.

  She crossed to where Miss Meggs sat behind one of the unused desks. Sylvia caught the assistant’s eye. “All in order?”

  “Indeed, Miss Buckleberry.” Miss Meggs’s smile said it all. “We’re all so much more comfortable here.” She nodded toward the boys, who had returned their attention to Cross. “They’ve settled right in and have been behaving themselves and, I would say, paying even greater attention to their lessons. Mr. Jellicoe, Mr. Cross, and I were saying just before that the change of venue seems to have convinced them that what they learn could truly make a difference.”

  Sylvia nodded. “One of those intangible effects, but all to the good.”

  “Indeed.”

  The door at the rear of the hall opened, and Jellicoe came in. He saw Sylvia, nodded and smiled in greeting, then strolled around the hall to join her.

  Sylvia turned to Miss Meggs. “Do you need any further supplies?”

  “Actually, yes.” The assistant started hunting through the papers on her desk. “I’ve been making a list... Ah, here it is.” She handed Sylvia a note with several items listed. “Just some chalks and more ink.”

  Sylvia took the list, scanned it, then tucked it into her reticule. “I’ll probably call in on Monday—I’ll bring them then.”

  Jellicoe halted beside her, his expression conveying his satisfaction. “Next time you see Lord Cavanaugh, do pass on our profound thanks for our change of scenery.” He grinned. “It’s reawakened our enthusiasm—and not just ours, but theirs, too.” He tipped his head toward their pupils, then drew out his watch, consulted it, and tucked the timepiece back into his waistcoat pocket. “Time to get back to our lessons.”