The Pursuits of Lord Kit Cavanaugh

by Stephanie Laurens

  So she’d come to suspect, but hearing the confirmation from his lips was nevertheless reassuring. She pressed her head against his chest in wordless acceptance. “I understand that now, but I had no way of knowing it then, so your reputation ensured that I steered well clear of you.” She paused, then forced herself to admit, “However, far from dousing my obsession, learning the length and breadth of your reputation—based on your reputed deeds—only made my obsessive fascination with you all the more intense.”

  She could almost hear him thinking, remembering things she’d said before she’d come to know him better.

  “That’s why,” he eventually said, dawning understanding in his voice, “you behaved so repellingly at the wedding.”

  “Until I arrived at Throgmorton Hall on the day before the wedding, I had no idea I would be partnered with you in the bridal party.” She softly snorted. “You can imagine my dismay. Which, I might add, only grew when I discovered—as I walked down the aisle, no less—that my obsession with you hadn’t faded over the years, but instead, had become even more intense. That my senses were even more fixated on you—my forbidden fantasy lord.”

  He made a sound halfway between a laugh and a scoff. “You hid it well.”

  “I had to.” She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “I was terrified the whole time. Terrified I would do or say something hideously embarrassing that would give me away...and then you claimed me for that waltz!”

  He didn’t look repentant in the least. “It was my waltz to claim. Others would have noticed if I hadn’t led you out.”

  She jabbed a fingertip into his chest. “Yes, but you enjoyed it.”

  His wicked smile bloomed. “I did. And I didn’t.”

  Kit looked into her eyes, then softly said, “I was attracted to you, too. I tracked you through the crowd, chose my moment, and pounced. But I couldn’t work out what you were about—what game you were playing. It wasn’t one I recognized, much less understood. You kept your shields up, and I couldn’t get past them. With me, you were a cold and disdainful lady, yet I saw you laughing and smiling with others...and I wanted your smiles, even then.”

  She arched her brows. “Really? I thought I’d succeeded in putting you off.”

  He nodded. “You had. I drove away thinking I would never see you again, so attraction aside, I should just put you down as a peculiar and unattainable lady, forget you, and be done with it.”

  “I watched you drive away and thought the same—that I’d survived the encounter, and I wouldn’t see you again.”

  His lips curved, and he smiled into her eyes. “Luckily for us, Fate had other plans. The instant you stormed into my office and started berating me over the school, I knew my view of you was grossly in error. After that, of course, I was never going to rest until I learned all your secrets.”

  He paused, looking into her eyes and reveling in the wordless connection, then he bent his head and brushed a kiss to her forehead. “Thank you for telling me. Our past now makes sense, and I don’t have to worry that you’ll suddenly revert to ice-maiden again.”

  She laughed. “I can promise you that.” After a moment, she added, “You might have had a false façade, but I had one, too.”

  “Mind you,” he mused, “I doubt any man can live up to a lady’s forbidden fantasy, even if that fantasy is about him.”

  Her chuckle turned innocently sultry, a contradiction that tightened his groin. “In that, my lord, you’re once again in error.” Her teasing eyes suggested she was enjoying setting him straight. Her gaze lowered to his lips. “I decided some days ago that, on closer acquaintance, the real you possessed the abilities to significantly trump every fantasy I’ve ever fashioned.”

  She had to mean the kiss they’d shared on Mrs. Macintyre’s porch. He widened his eyes at her, but her gaze remained on his lips. They curved as, unable to resist, he inquired, “Really?”

  “Definitely.” Siren-like, she turned in his arms and lifted her face to kiss him—but then she paused and, at tantalizingly close quarters, met his eyes and breathed, “Of course, that means you’ve already set a high standard, one you’ll have to strive to live up to for the rest of our lives.”

  Kit smiled wolfishly, then lowered his head, closing the last half inch to murmur against her lips, “My darling wife-to-be, you perceive me ready, willing, and very able to take up that challenge.” He touched his lips to hers in the lightest, most delicate of kisses, before adding, “Now and forever.”

  Then he kissed her, and she kissed him, and he let her lead him as she would, into the future they both desired with every iota of their beings and with all their hearts.

  EPILOGUE

  Lord Christopher Cavanaugh and Miss Sylvia Buckleberry were married on the fourth of November in Christ Church in Bristol. The bride wore white satin lightly ornamented with pearl-encrusted lace, with a glorious trailing veil fashioned from the same lace anchored in her golden-blond hair by a fabulous pearl-and-diamond band—a wedding gift from the proud bridegroom. Everyone in attendance agreed that no happier, more serene bride had ever been walked down an aisle. There was an air of confidence in Sylvia’s step that was echoed in her bridegroom’s eyes, signaling that here were two people who knew what they wanted from life and were acting determinedly to secure it.

  Indeed, Kit looked like a man eager to plunge into matrimony. His responses to the Bishop of Bath and Wells—a friend of the bride’s family who had volunteered to officiate—were uttered in a voice that rang with commitment.

  Although in terms of ton invitees, the guest list had been restricted to close family, when the couple were duly proclaimed man and wife and, after sharing a chaste kiss, turned to the body of the nave, there was a horde of well-wishers filling the space between the newlyweds and the church door.

  As had been the case at the previous weddings of her older brothers, Lady Eustacia Cavanaugh had acted as one of three bridesmaids. Together with Mary and Felicia, Stacie stood on the altar steps and, smiling, watched as the crowd closed around Kit and Sylvia, people pressing in from all sides to shake Kit’s hand or thump his back and to press kisses to Sylvia’s gloved hands.

  Kit had lived in Bristol for only a few short months, yet, as usual, he’d fallen on his feet. And judging by the way the onlookers were greeting her, Sylvia plainly belonged. As well as those Stacie had expected to see—Wayland Cobworth and several of Kit’s other gentlemen friends plus local adults from Bristol and Saltford, Sylvia’s home village—a gaggle of schoolboys were eagerly pushing close to shake Kit’s and Sylvia’s hands, and behind the boys came a troop of smiling laborers and tradesmen, all decked out in their Sunday best.

  Two older ladies seemed to have taken charge; one flanking Kit and the other by Sylvia’s side, the pair appeared to be imposing some degree of order on the milling throng.

  Standing beside Stacie, Felicia sighed. “I’d almost given up hope of seeing Sylvia wed, but to have her marry Kit and become my sister-in-law is beyond even my most inventive dreams.”

  Stacie glanced at Felicia, then returned her gaze to Sylvia. “It must be nice to be able to have a childhood friendship transform into a long-term familial one.”

  “Indeed.” Mary stepped closer on Felicia’s other side; Stacie saw her sometimes scarifying sister-in-law understandingly squeeze Felicia’s arm. “Ryder and I couldn’t be happier over this union. While some might say Kit could have done better, I strongly suspect he never would have—that if he hadn’t found Sylvia, he wouldn’t have married at all. He certainly had no thoughts of marriage when he left the Abbey for Bristol.” After a second of observing the happy couple, Mary added, “Ryder says Sylvia brings out the best in Kit, not by pushing but simply by giving him the opportunity to be all he can be.”

  Felicia nodded. “I agree. Sylvia has no concept of how to manage a man—she never has had. Instead, she’ll simply assume Kit will step up
to the mark—”

  “And,” Stacie concluded, “because he’s besotted and is happy to do whatever she wants, he will.”

  Mary chuckled. “The power of positive expectations. Hmm.” Her gaze cut to her husband, standing to one side talking to Kit’s other groomsmen, Rand and Godfrey, then to her three children, who had acted as pageboys and flower girl and who were presently standing opposite their father and, uncharacteristically quietly, watching the newlyweds. After a second of observing her children, Mary rather distractedly said, “I really must see if I can use the same tactic—and now might be an excellent time to attempt it. If you’ll excuse me, I suspect I have mayhem to avert.”

  Stacie and Felicia chuckled as Mary stepped down and headed to where her children stood.

  Shortly afterward, Kit and Sylvia were ushered by the crowd to the church doors. Along with the rest of the bridal party, Stacie followed and, from the porch, watched as the newlyweds descended the church steps to the pavement, showered with rice all the way. Laughing, arm in arm, the pair turned at the curb, waved, then made for the hall of the Council House on the other side of the street, where the wedding breakfast was to be held.

  Those invited to partake—family and close friends—waited on the church steps while the rest of the crowd, smiling and laughing, dispersed in groups of twos and threes, heads together, excitedly reviewing all they’d seen and heard. Once the crowd had gone, the invited guests strolled after Kit and Sylvia.

  Stacie had attended so many wedding breakfasts over her twenty-six years that, once the speeches started, she tended to stop listening. In this case, however, she found her attention transfixed, not so much by the words uttered as by the sight of Kit and Sylvia and the emotion that glowed all but tangibly between them. It was there in their faces whenever their gazes met. Visibly there even when one merely looked upon the other.

  Of her mother’s four children, Stacie would have marked Kit as the least likely to put his faith in love. To take the risk and give his heart to any lady, yet plainly, he had.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t see the attraction—the lure of a home, a welcoming hearth, and a loving and supportive family. With Ryder and Mary, and Rand and Felicia, and now Kit and Sylvia all marrying for love, Stacie couldn’t pretend not to understand the benefits and joys of giving one’s heart into the keeping of another.

  Another person one trusted to that depth, to that extent.

  Trusted to the point of placing one’s most precious and vital inner secrets into that person’s hands.

  It was that critical issue of trust that had long ago convinced her that love and marriage could never be hers—that she should never aspire to such a union.

  She let her gaze travel over her older siblings—her half brother, Ryder, and her brothers Rand and Kit. Despite the misgivings she imagined all three must have harbored courtesy of Lavinia, the late marchioness, all three had had the courage to willingly trust another. She knew they wouldn’t have done so lightly, and, indeed, she felt certain all three had made the right decision.

  Mary could and did manipulate with the best of them, but in that she merely matched Ryder, and Mary would never, ever, harm Ryder, much less her children. If any dared threaten her family, Mary transformed into a tigress—not a being wise people crossed.

  As for Felicia, she, too, knew how to manipulate, but her love for Rand meant she rarely attempted to manipulate him. She and Rand shared a passion for logic and order and, from all Stacie had seen and heard, discussions between them tended to occur on a very rational and direct level.

  And as Felicia had earlier said, Sylvia didn’t seem to know how to manipulate at all, which was just as well; Stacie didn’t think that, after being caught too often in their mother’s coils, Kit would ever respond well to being manipulated, even for his own good.

  Of the five children of the late Marquess of Raventhorne, only Stacie and Godfrey remained unwed, and as Godfrey was only twenty-five and, in Stacie’s opinion, almost as unlikely to marry as she was, the present celebration seemed set to be the last Cavanaugh wedding for some years. Possibly for decades.

  Kit’s was the last of the speeches. When he concluded and invited all to charge their glasses, Stacie lifted hers and, with a smile as bright as anyone’s, toasted first the bridal party, then Sylvia.

  After that, everyone rose from the tables and mingled.

  Stacie made a point of stopping beside the few Cavanaugh connections who were present and dutifully passing the time of day. As usual, several of the ladies inquired in an arch tone as to her own matrimonial intentions, but she’d long ago learned how to turn such queries aside without giving offense and also without revealing any of her thoughts.

  If they only knew...

  But no one knew as much about what Lavinia, the late marchioness and Stacie’s mother, had done than Stacie. No one else knew the full extent of the scandalous behavior in which Lavinia had indulged. As a child, then a young girl growing up in her mother’s shadow, always in her mother’s household and held very close under her mother’s not-so-loving wing, Stacie had seen far too much to ever trust herself.

  To ever allow another to trust her with their heart.

  She was her mother’s daughter. As many had reminded her even today, she was the spitting image of Lavinia in her heyday. Before the lines and wrinkles of dissipation had started to show.

  And the similarity extended beneath the skin; manipulation was a skill that came far too readily to Stacie’s mind.

  Sometimes, it was almost second nature.

  A nature she’d sworn to resist.

  She had no ambition whatsoever to follow in her mother’s footsteps. That, in fact, was her one ambition—to never become another Lavinia.

  Which meant that she could never marry.

  She would not risk it. Even marriages of convenience had been known to end in mutual affection—and even that was a temptation to manipulation she might not be able to resist, not if the lure was constantly before her.

  She’d been there, in her parents’ household; she’d seen what manipulation had done to their marriage—how deeply the slow death of her father’s trust in his wife had hurt him.

  The payments Stacie received from the marquessate as stipulated by her father’s will were generous; she didn’t need to marry to keep a suitable roof over her head or pay an appropriate staff. And as Lady Eustacia Cavanaugh, with her connection through Mary to the powerful Cynster family, she didn’t need a husband’s title to give her standing in the ton.

  The tables had been removed and chairs set in the corners for those who needed to sit. Now the musicians started up, and Stacie joined the other guests in watching Kit and Sylvia circle the floor in their first waltz as a married couple. As was expected, she and her partner—Godfrey—joined the other couples of the bridal party in the second revolution. Then the rest of the guests joined in, and laughter and merriment bubbled all around.

  Subsequently, she danced with Wayland Cobworth, Kit’s longtime friend and business partner, and learned how their new enterprise, Cavanaugh Yachts, was faring.

  Then exhibiting not the slightest preference, she danced with the others who admiringly solicited her hand.

  She was a past master at slipping from their side with a smile at the end of each measure.

  Finally, the musicians put up their bows, and she was free to wander the hall. She’d noticed Godfrey circling the walls, pausing before each portrait that adorned the paneling. She caught up with him, sliding her arm through his and looking up at the portrait he was presently studying.

  He glanced at her, then returned his gaze to the picture—of a man in robes with a chain of gold discs hanging halfway down his chest. A past mayor, she supposed. “What are you doing?”

  “Hmm? Oh, examining these. Some are really quite good. I wonder if the council knows the value of what they have hangin
g in this hall.”

  She peered more closely at the painting, trying to find a signature. “Are they really that valuable?”

  Godfrey sent her a sidelong glance. “Enough to warrant stealing. Not that I’m about to embark on a life of crime.”

  “Good to know.”

  The exchange reminded her of something that had struck her the day before, when the bridal party had gathered at Kit’s house and everyone had been sitting around catching up with each other’s news.

  Everyone else had had something to say; she’d been the only one with no actual purpose to her life and, consequently, nothing in terms of goals achieved to report.

  Mary had her children, her household to run, and she was also working to establish schools and other improvements for the workers on the marquessate’s far-flung estates.

  Felicia worked hand in glove with her brother, William, on steam-powered inventions and also with Rand in evaluating the inventions of others; the pair were planning a trip to Paris to investigate some new type of pen, of all things.

  And Sylvia was neck-deep in running her school—a school she’d more or less single-handedly founded.

  Her brothers all had occupations—Ryder managing the marquessate’s estates, Rand and his investment syndicates, Kit with his yachts, and even Godfrey was tiptoeing toward some sort of position in the art world.

  Only she was utterly without purpose.

  As on Godfrey’s arm, she moved around the room, pretending to study the paintings, she decided that, as she wasn’t going to marry, her lack of occupation needed to be rectified.

  She’d noted that all the others had found their purpose in their strongest passion—Godfrey and his obsession with art being a perfect example.

  Her only true passion was music. Sadly, among the ton, a liking for music was hardly unique, but for her, the fascination went much deeper. So what life-purpose could she create for herself based on music?