Chapter 11 #2
She nodded. “But that’s in the opposite direction to your house.
” She lowered her lids and watched his face through her lashes.
“You don’t have to escort me all the way there, you know.
” She’d been walking the streets of Bristol for the past two years without incident; she had very little fear of the areas she had to traverse.
He started them strolling toward the nearby intersection with Wine Street. His expression was unperturbed as he replied, “I do, as it happens—both know that and yet have to escort you to your door.”
Her lips curved more deeply, and she looked ahead. After a moment, she murmured, “Ah—I see.”
He steered her across the busy intersection, and they continued down High Street.
Somewhat sternly, she told herself not to read too much into what he very likely saw as common courtesy. Or at least the sort of gentlemanly attention he would bestow on any lady he knew were she to set out to cross a city the likes of Bristol.
Still, it was impossible not to feel a fillip of happiness that he was willing to go so far out of his way to see her safely home.
Her pleasant mood made the icy chill that slithered across her nape all the more noticeable. She tensed, then quickly looked around.
“What is it?” Kit halted, every instinct on high alert.
He scanned the crowds behind them—a bustling throng jostling along the pavements of Corn Street to the left and Wine Street to the right, with people dodging and weaving through the equally strong flow of pedestrians going up and down Broad and High Streets. “The watcher?”
“Yes.” Sylvia’s tone was quietly furious. “And whoever he is, he’s a coward—as soon as I look, he stops.”
Kit drew her to the side of the pavement, putting their backs to the building while he searched the scurrying sea of humanity.
Beside him, Sylvia, doing the same, huffed disgruntledly. “There’s so many people, yet not one of them looks out of place.”
He had to agree. There were businessmen of all stripes as well as hawkers of this and that, a chestnut vendor, and the ubiquitous men carrying placards advertising one or other chapel.
There were messenger boys darting in and out, weaving their way through the throng, and older women as well as girls trudging home after working as shop assistants or the like.
After a moment more of fruitless searching, Kit closed his hand over Sylvia’s, now gripping his arm. “Come. Let’s walk on.”
She nodded tersely and settled into step beside him. “Maybe he’ll follow us, and we’ll get a better sighting in the less-populated streets.”
He glanced at her. “Tell me the instant you sense him, but don’t stop or look around.”
Briefly, she met his eyes and nodded.
They remained on high alert all the way to Mrs. Macintyre’s house. As they approached the gate, in response to Kit’s inquiring look, her lips tight, Sylvia shook her head. “Nothing. He didn’t follow.”
Kit escorted her up the steps to the porch and waited while she hunted in her reticule and found her latchkey. She inserted it into the lock, then paused and looked up at him. “Thank you. It was less…bothersome because you were with me.”
She couldn’t have said anything better designed to soothe his flaring instincts.
He searched her eyes, then stated, “Obviously, your watcher isn’t Bill Johnson.”
“No.”
“And I doubt it was the Stenshaw lads, either.” He paused, then admitted, “My groom, Smiggs, and I caught up with the Stenshaws on Tuesday night. I wanted to make sure they hadn’t been behind the sabotage at the warehouse.
But I seriously doubt they had any involvement in that incident, nor had they been watching you. ”
She sighed, her gaze going past him to the street. “I wonder who it is—and even more importantly, why? A clergyman’s daughter already on the shelf is hardly an attractive target for abduction and ransom.”
He nearly disputed her description of herself, but decided how he saw her wasn’t germane to the discussion.
He debated doing something to appease his clawing instincts—such as demanding she allow him to escort her everywhere—but that, he felt sure, would put her back up.
He was forced to settle for capturing her gaze and saying, “Please promise me you’ll take care when out walking and that you won’t venture out at night alone or anything similar. ”
The look she bent on him was the same long-suffering, “don’t be foolish” look he’d seen Mary bestow on Ryder times beyond counting.
“Of course I won’t do anything senseless. Besides,” she said, finally turning the key, “I have no nighttime excursions planned other than Friday’s concert with you.”
The reminder of that event improved his mood considerably.
Enough for him to share a last smile with her and bow gracefully in farewell.
He waited on the step until she was inside and had closed the door, then swung around and strode quickly down the path and along the pavement to where he’d seen a hackney idling.
After hailing it, he climbed up and dropped onto the seat. As the jarvey turned his horse toward Queen’s Parade, Kit frowned into the softly gathering twilight.
Could the person who was watching Sylvia with malignant intent be somehow connected to the break-in at the workshop? No matter how he twisted the facts, he couldn’t dismiss the possibility.
As the hackney rattled on, Kit found himself facing the disturbing prospect that the reason behind Sylvia being watched might have more to do with him than her.
After eating a solitary dinner in a dining room that, courtesy of Gordon’s efforts, was starting to look like a dining room and no longer part of an empty house, Kit adjourned to his study.
Along with his bedroom, the study had been one of the first rooms to be completely furnished. Kit crossed to the tantalus, poured himself a good inch of French brandy, then sank into one of the comfortable wing chairs angled before the hearth.
Every now and then—usually every month or so—past experience prodded him to stop and take stock. To retreat to an appropriate mental distance and review what he’d accomplished and what he planned to do next, the better to keep his feet firmly on the most direct path to his ultimate goal.
The activity had become habit in the years during which circumstances had forced him to live under his mother’s thumb, subject to her manipulative whims. Of Lavinia’s four children, he’d been the least susceptible to her ploys; he’d quickly learned to plot and plan so she had as little chance as possible to dictate his actions.
The other three—Rand, Stacie, and Godfrey—had been aware of Lavinia’s machinations and her interference in their lives, but although Rand, too, had resisted, the other two had had a harder time of it, Stacie especially.
Kit sipped and felt the fiery amber liquid slide smoothly down his throat. He hadn’t sat down intending to become mired in the past, yet…
Since Lavinia’s death six years ago, he’d been drifting, both physically and emotionally. Flitting here, then there, not settling anywhere.
Until now.
He considered that reality—the past from which he’d come—then took another larger sip of brandy and firmly turned his mind to his present.
To Cavanaugh Yachts and the progress made over the past two weeks.
When he’d driven into Bristol, Cavanaugh Yachts had been nothing more than a name and a concept—and a lot of hopes.
Eleven days on, and Cavanaugh Yachts was a going concern, with suitable premises, a workforce more able than he and Wayland could have hoped to assemble so quickly, and despite the attempted sabotage, they had a first hull taking shape.
There was nothing in that with which to quibble. Satisfaction welled. They’d done well, laid a solid foundation, and could go forward from there.
Their next step? Orders. With luck, their sign would be up within the week. Once it was, he would start spreading word of their existence, yet realistically, until they had their first yacht completed and on the water, wise buyers would hang back.
He and Wayland had agreed that their first hull should remain the property of the company, a showpiece on which to take prospective buyers out on the waves.
He would buy the second yacht they built, Wayland would take the third, and Ryder and Rand were going to go in together to purchase the fourth.
That would give the company enough work to see them well into the new year.
After that was when having a steady stream of orders would become essential.
There was little he could do in terms of securing further orders at present. Better he spent his time working with Wayland and the men to ensure their first yacht was as perfect as they could make it.
With that settled, he shifted his focus to the other side of his life—to home and hearth.
His house was his, and his small household was taking shape nicely.
The staff worked efficiently and had knitted into a comfortable core of mutual support; he deemed no adjustments to be necessary.
However, Gordon and Smiggs had started dropping hints that they needed to hire a housekeeper, yet that was one selection neither felt capable of making—and Kit boggled at doing so himself.
Hiring housekeepers, maids, and the like was the province of the lady of the house—a position that, in this house, was currently vacant.
He shifted in the chair and sipped again. He hadn’t consciously considered marrying for a very long time. Not since his mother and her machinations had turned him off the entire concept, tarnishing the ideal to such an extent that he and all in him had revolted and rebelled.
But Lavinia was six years dead, and her effect on him had faded along with his memories of her interference.