The Pursuits of Lord Kit Cavanaugh (The Cavanaughs 2)

Wayland gestured helplessly at the broken timbers. “I don’t know. I just arrived, found the latch on the door broken, and walked in to discover”—he waved—“this!” With both hands, he snatched at his hair. “Aargh! I knew it was too good to be true.”

Kit felt the same way. They’d been rolling along without so much as a glitch and, now, this.

But this wasn’t any accident.

“Who?” Wayland said. “That’s what I want to know.”

Grimly, Kit nodded. An image of the man he’d glimpsed walking away up the alley the day before swam into his mind. During working hours, the doors of the workshop were always propped open. If the man had been skulking in the Grove, he would have been able to see what was being built inside. “When I left yesterday, I saw a man in the alley two buildings away. I didn’t see his face. When I saw him, he was walking away, but I got the impression he was leaving...that I’d disturbed him and sent him off.”

Wayland studied Kit’s face. “You think he’d been watching us?”

Thinking back over the moment, Kit nodded. “I suspect so. We’re the only active enterprise along this stretch—all the other buildings are stores or offices.”

And then there was whoever had been watching Sylvia. Were the two “watchers” one and the same?

Was Sylvia being watched because she was connected with him? Anyone who had been following him over the past days would have seen him with her.

A large shape loomed in the doorway, then Mulligan pulled up short. “What on earth?”

His features grim, Wayland nodded. “Exactly. Apparently, someone doesn’t want us to succeed.”

Mulligan’s face set. “We’ll see about that.” The burly foreman walked in and paced around the frame supporting the keel. Then he halted and snorted. “Luckily, it’s not as bad as it looks. The center part of the frame is intact. The outer sections will have to be replaced, but there’s no damage I can see to the bilge board. That would have set us back.”

“Hmm.” Wayland joined Mulligan in examining the damage more critically. “We’ve plenty of timber—how long do you think it will take to strip out the damaged pieces and replace them?”

Mulligan glanced at the offices, which were nearly complete. “If we pull Shaw and his team off the offices today and use them alongside my group on the frame and keel, we should be back to where we were by early afternoon. Then we can push on. And Shaw will only need one man for a single day to polish off everything in the offices, so pulling him and his team off today won’t set things back too much.”

Wayland nodded. “Let’s do that.” He looked at Kit, brows rising.

“Yes,” Kit said, in reply to that look. “I’m sure that, in the circumstances, Miss Petty won’t be at all perturbed over having to wait another day to get into her new office.”

Mulligan grunted, and then the other men started streaming in, giving rise to more exclamations and subsequent explanations.

Briefly, Kit addressed the assembled men, admitting that he and Wayland had no idea who might have broken in and tried to wreck the build. “However, I do know that the best way forward after incidents like this is to put it behind us and get on—to repair, redo, and forge ahead.”

Although angry and dismayed, the men determinedly nodded at that. Kit waved Mulligan forward, and the foreman took over, assigning the day’s tasks.

Kit worked with Wayland and Mulligan to get the men settled and focused again, with rectifying the damage as their top priority.

Once everyone was busy and the repairs under way, Kit stepped back beside one of the moveable tool racks. With his gaze on the men climbing about the frame as they pulled out damaged timbers, he pummeled his brain for who might be responsible—for any rhyme or reason behind the sabotage.

Wayland slouched up and halted beside him, his gaze on the men as well. After a moment, he said, “I keep coming back to the question of who would do something like this.” He raked his fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to smooth down the tufts he’d created.

Kit shook his head. “I can’t imagine. I’ve been wracking my brains trying to think of any enemies I have, or even might have, who would stoop to this, but I ca

n’t think of anyone.”

“Especially anyone who might be here—in Bristol.” After a second, Wayland said, “I haven’t come up with any potential suspects, either.”

They watched Jack scurry back and forth, fetching tools for the men as they called for them—and sometimes when they didn’t.

After a long moment of pondering, Kit said, “Over the last few days, Sylvia Buckleberry has been disturbed by the sensation of someone watching her. Ever since the fire. She hasn’t spotted anyone but, given the location of the incidents, wondered if it was the Stenshaw lads—those two who set the fire at the school.”

Wayland nodded his understanding, and Kit continued, “It occurs to me that if those two were vicious enough to try to unnerve her by stalking her, then perhaps they thought to strike at me as well. In reality, they’d have more reason to come after me, and therefore this workshop, than her.”

Wayland tipped his head. “I suppose that’s possible. And we don’t have all that many possibilities.”

“None except for that man I saw yesterday, but he could simply have been an interested bystander—no malicious intentions at all.”