A slight frown tangled her brows; she was tall enough that he didn’t have to bend his head to see her face. “Now that you mention it, no.” She met his eyes. “Not this morning when I walked to the office, and not when I walked over here, either.”
“Johnson admitted he’d been watching the school—trying to catch glimpses of Ned without Ned or anyone else seeing him. He also said he’d watched you over recent days, trying to get up the courage to speak to you.”
“Oh.” Her face cleared. “That must have been what I sensed.”
Kit tipped his head. “Possibly. But now that Johnson is working at Cavanaugh Yachts, you shouldn’t feel that odd sensation again.”
Sylvia smiled a touch self-deprecatingly. “It’s a relief to know it was something so innocent. It must have been the aftermath of the fire that made me think there was something...malevolent in the gaze.”
The word “malevolent” disturbed Kit; he couldn’t imagine that Johnson’s anguished but innocent staring would have triggered such a feeling, fire or not.
They reached the Butts and turned toward the bridge. Sylvia lightly gripped his arm, refocusing his attention. “You know how things at the school are going. So tell me about your progress at the workshop.” She turned bright eyes on him. “How is work on your first boat going?”
“Ship,” he corrected, all but instinctively. Then he tipped his head. “But more accurately, yacht.”
The look she sent him was playfully long-suffering. “Your first yacht, then.”
He paused to help her onto the drawbridge. As they fell into step again, he said, “Unfortunately, we suffered an unexpected setback.” He met her questioning, incipiently concerned gaze. “On Monday night or early Tuesday morning, someone broke in and sabotaged the work we’d done on our first keel.”
“Good Lord.” She gripped his arm more tightly. Her gaze searched his face. “Was anyone hurt?”
He shook his head. “No. The damage was all to the new work.” Hearing his own words gave him pause. He frowned.
“Did whoever it was steal much?” Sylvia asked.
“No.” He blinked. “Nothing at all. And yes, that strikes me as strange.”
They stepped down off the drawbridge and, wending through knots of people, made their way into Clare Street.
Once they were pacing steadily again, Kit went on, “That said, we’ve already put the incident behind us and forged on. Our carpenters have started setting in the ribs of the hull.”
Sylvia listened as he described the current state of the hull, struggling to mute her smile as enthusiasm flowed through his tone and lit his face. He sounded so much like the students—very much a case of “boys will be boys.”
When they crossed into Corn Street and he reached the end of his description with a “That’s how it stands as of today,” she remarked, “I admit I’m having trouble imagining the old warehouse being such a hive of activity—it always seemed such a cavernous space.”
“Oh, we’ve changed things—altered it to suit our needs.” He described the new offices, the gantry, and the huge tool racks.
She stared in unfeigned amazement. “You and your men have certainly been busy.”
He grinned at her. “We have.”
There was a wealth of sincere satisfaction in his expression; she studied it in something close to wonder. Had anyone told her—even a month ago—that Lord Kit Cavanaugh would find this degree of pleasure and joy in such work, she would have scoffed.
Yet hadn’t she already accepted that the man she’d believed him to be didn’t exist? That the man on whose arm she was entirely contentedly strolling was someone else entirely?
She looked ahead. It was nearly five o’clock, and the pavements were increasingly crowded with people heading home. They reached the intersection of Small and Corn Streets and were about to turn right when someone behind them stumbled, and the resulting jostling shoved her forward.
Kit caught her, steadied her, then, drawing her closer and linking her arm with his, using his larger frame to shield her, he quickly steered her around the corner.
Within a few paces, the press of bodies eased. She drew in a tight breath. “Thank you.”
He flashed her a smile—a genuine one, not the charming gesture she’d seen him deploy in ballrooms. “My pleasure.”
She knew he meant the words, too. He honestly liked protecting people, ladies especially. She now understood that had nothing to do with his rakish reputation but was simply an expression of the sort of man he was.
The man he truly was—the real man she was coming to know.
She looked ahead as they continued strolling, still close with her arm linked with his, their clothes lightly brushing with each stride as they progressed down the street.