“No, sadly, but I wondered if you might be able to help me.”
“If I can, I will.” The clerk puffed out his thin chest. “What is it you need help with?”
“I’m trying to learn the name of the businessman who’s taken the lease on the warehouse the school’s been using. It’s a new business coming to town, so I’m sure he’ll have listed at least a few positions with this office.”
“Oh.” Now the clerk looked wary. His eyes shifted to the older man serving others farther along the counter. Then the clerk leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I don’t know as how I can, miss. That sort of information is only given to those who need to know—we don’t even tell the men we send who they’ll be speaking to, who listed the position. We only give out the details of the position and where to apply.”
Sylvia frowned. “Surely you give out the name of the business?”
“Oh. Yes—we do that. The gentleman I think you’re after posted several positions for Cavanaugh Yachts.”
For an instant, Sylvia thought bells were ringing, distorting her hearing. “Cavanaugh Yachts?”
The clerk looked at her anxiously. “Are you all right, miss?”
She waved aside his concern. There were three Cavanaugh brothers—four if you counted the marquess, but this man couldn’t be he. And it was unlikely to be Rand, either, and Godfrey was surely too young...
She licked her suddenly dry lips. “Tell me,” she said, not truly seeing the clerk anymore but a tall man in a morning suit. “Was this gentleman on the tallish side, with wide shoulders and brown hair...” She cast about for words to describe the aura that hung about her nemesis. “And looked to be the sort of gentleman who would laugh in the devil’s face?”
Refocusing on the clerk, she saw he was frowning.
“Actually,” Elroy’s brother said, “now I think of it, there were two of them. Two gentlemen who came in at different times, but hiring for the same business. The first was tall and thin, lanky-like, and he had dark brown hair, but the other gent—the one who listed a position for a secretary this morning—he was like you said.” The clerk nodded earnestly. “Had just such an air about him, you know?”
Sylvia knew all about the airs affected by Lord Kit Cavanaugh. Her wits were reeling, but she seized the straw the clerk had just offered her. “If I wanted to apply for the position of secretary to Cavanaugh Yachts, where would I go?”
The answer was a recently completed building in King Street. Sylvia thanked the clerk, then left the exchange and, gaze leveled and purpose in her stride, walked briskly toward King Street, an explosive mix of determination and rising anger simmering in her veins.
* * *
Kit stood in his inner office and studied the plans spread on the desk before him. Wayland must have been up half the night drawing the detailed sketches, but he’d been bright-eyed and eager when he’d dropped off the plans ten minutes ago with strict instructions that he expected Kit to have checked and approved them by the time Wayland called back in the early afternoon.
“I want to order the timber today,” Wayland had said. “It’ll take at least a day, maybe more, to fill such an order, and I don’t want to find that we’re still waiting on Monday.”
Kit had agreed. While Wayland went off to check at the labor exchange to see who had replied to their various listings, Kit had settled to peruse the plans.
The silence about him impinged; it was not what he was used to. The building was newly completed and, thus far, only partially let; the offices to either side lay empty. In addition, the builders had used thicker glass in the windows, which muted the sounds of the traffic along King Street to a distant rumble.
He glanced up—through the doorway to the outer office; he’d left the door between open so he could see the corridor door. He needed to find a secretary; he’d put up a listing that morning, but doubted anything would come of it for at least a few days. The clerk at the labor exchange had said he would circulate the listing to the exchanges in those parts of the city more likely to harbor a suitable female.
Until he hired someone, he was on his own, yet to his mind, getting the Cavanaugh Yachts workshop functional as soon as possible had to remain his pre-eminent goal.
While approving Wayland’s design was easy enough, checking his figures required concentration; marshaling his, Kit started on the dimensions of the office closer to the warehouse door, matching them with Wayland’s suggested timber frame.
Someone hammered on the outer door.
Startled, Kit looked up—in time to see the door flung open and a neatly dressed lady storm in.
She halted, saw him, and skewered him with a scorching glare.
Tall, with a willowy figure and svelte curves, garbed in a violet-blue walking dress over a white silk blouse, her wheat-blond hair drawn back from an arresting face carved from alabaster—
Recognition slammed into him and scrambled his brain.
Sylvia Buckleberry?
At his stupefied reaction, her eyes narrowed even further. She whirled and shut the door, then, with a furious swishing of skirts, marched through the outer office.
She stepped into his inner sanctum and let fly. “I might have known!” Her tone dripped acid; her bosom swelled as she drew breath. “Of all the cities in England, you had to choose this one, and, of course, you think nothing of trampling over whomever and whatever stands in your way.” She locked her eyes on his as she halted on the other side of the desk, then dramatically flung her arms wide. “I can just imagine the reactions of the Dock Company directors. ‘Yes, my lord. No, my lord. Three bags full, my lord.’” Indigo sparks flared in the periwinkle-blue of her eyes. Her lush lips set in a thin line, she glared at him accusingly. “I’m quite sure that’s how it went.”
She railed on, but while Kit’s brain registered her words, he wasn’t really listening.
Instead, he could only stare, grappling to make sense of the transformation of Sylvia Buckleberry that had manifested before him.
The first and last time he’d seen her—just weeks ago at Rand’s wedding, where, courtesy of Sylvia being one of Felicia’s bridesmaids and Kit being one of Rand’s groomsmen, Kit had been Sylvia’s partner—she’d treated him to a very effective cold shoulder. More, she’d given every indication of being a rigidly buttoned-down, haughtily dismissive, and chillingly distant sort of lady.
The lady before him was anything but.
This Sylvia Buckleberry was all fire and passion and life.
Blatantly driven by determination and willpower, she was a force of nature done up in a very attractive package.
On an intellectual level, he was aware that he’d noticed her physical attributes before, but at the time, their impact had been negated by her attitude. Now, however, this Sylvia Buckleberry was fixing his attention in a much more avid way.
She had, quite literally, transfixed his senses and scattered his wits.
And his lack of response to her tirade was making her seethe.
The glare she leveled at him was all hellfire and brimstone. “I’m well aware that London rakes cannot be expected to care in the slightest over a dockyard school, but why couldn’t you remain in London? Why did you have to come here and spoil everything? Do you have any notion of how much damage you’re likely to do to the fabric of local society?”
Those words finally penetrated the haze fogging his brain. He blinked, then frowned. “What the devil are you accusing me of?”
The look she bent on him was all dismissive scorn. “As if you don’t know.”