“Yet despite all that, at this moment, our enterprise is young. We’re in the process of building the reputation we want, but right now, we’re vulnerable. We don’t need any questions being raised about us having some ongoing feud with someone who is determined to wreck anything we build. You know how rumors fly around a waterfront. If our saboteur succeeds in damaging the keel again, the news will get out, and we’ll find not just other people but even our men getting cold feet—just when we need their commitment the most.”
Wayland huffed. “When you put it like that...” After a moment, he shrugged. “You’re right, but I still predict he won’t show—not tonight and not tomorrow night—simply because we’re here, and Fate likes to play us mortals for fools.”
Kit laughed and rose from the stool. “I was up late last night—I’m going to turn in.”
Wayland grunted. “It’s too dark even to play dice with myself.” He rose and, turning to where his hammock was slung across the end of his office, waved Kit off. “Sleep tight.”
Smiling, Kit ambled into the workshop. His eyes had adjusted and rendered the scene in shades of gray. The keel taking proud shape in the nearest of the three bays sat still and silent. Throughout the workspace, nothing moved, nothing stirred.
Satisfied, he went into the front office, picked up his blanket, and rolled himself into his hammock.
They’d checked and established that quiet sounds inside the workshop didn’t carry outside. As Kit settled to stare up at the ceiling, he heard Wayland murmur, “I feel like we’re boys again, out on some silly adventure-cum-lark.”
Kit grinned. “I can’t recall any of our larks involving sleeping in hammocks.”
“Much less in a cold and drafty workshop. Even as boys, we had better sense.”
Kit chuckled. As silence descended, he realized that, despite his earlier words, he wasn’t sleepy. Although he hadn’t said so, he felt that, as their would-be saboteur hadn’t come last night, then it was more likely he would wait until Sunday night, when this area of the city was even quieter, even more certainly deserted. Faced with the prospect of a wasted evening and night, Kit decided he might as well use the time to think of other things.
Out of the darkness, Wayland murmured, “It occurs to me that, over the past weeks of non-stop discussions about what we want our business to be, the one topic we haven’t touched on is how we see our wider lives developing once the business is established.” He paused, then went on, “I suppose I mean what else we want in our lives besides the
business.”
As that was precisely the direction in which Kit’s mind had gone, the subject he’d been wrestling with over the past week, he bit the proverbial bullet and volunteered, “I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit in recent days.”
“Have you? Do tell.” Amusement rode beneath Wayland’s words.
Kit smiled into the dark. “You might have noticed that, over the past weeks, I’ve had other calls on my time, namely the school and the lady who manages it—a Miss Sylvia Buckleberry.”
“I had noticed that,” Wayland drily replied.
Kit went on, “I’d met Miss Buckleberry before—a month or so ago. She was a bridesmaid at Rand and Felicia’s wedding, and being a groomsman, I was partnered with her throughout the event.”
“And?”
“She treated me as if I was...someone she definitely didn’t want to know.” If he was brutally honest, he’d been fascinated by her from the instant he’d laid eyes on her—as she’d walked up the aisle ahead of Mary and Felicia. But that attraction had been immediately quashed by the downright chilly way she’d responded to him.
He’d written her off as a lost cause—as a spinster too strait-laced to bother with. One he should forget as soon as he possibly could.
Instead, a bare month later, she’d stormed into his office and shown him a completely different side of her—a vibrant, passionate lady—and his initial attraction had roared back to life, stronger, more powerful. More insistent.
“What?” Pure puzzlement on Wayland’s part.
“Indeed. To this day, I have no idea what caused her to behave as she did, but suffice it to say that, since we met again here and have been working together to resolve various issues at the school, she’s altered her view of my poor self.” Given their kiss last night, he decided he could feel assured of that.
“Were you out with her somewhere last night?”
“Yes. She accompanied me to a concert at the Council House.”
“Really?” Interest sparked in Wayland’s voice. “You took a lady—an unmarried lady—out for an evening in the full glare of society?”
Kit’s smile turned wry. “Indeed.” Wayland knew all about Kit’s late mother and her machinations and how that had affected Kit’s attitudes toward ladies and marriage.
“Well, that is a development,” Wayland said, amazement still flavoring his tone.
After a moment of staring into the dark, Kit said, “You know that, with my mother’s example before me, I believed marriage was not for me—not for any of us. Not Rand, Stacie, or Godfrey, either. That none of us would ever be able to find our way to marriage, a family, and all the rest. When Ryder married so clearly for love, I could shrug that aside—he’d never been caught in Mama’s coils and was our half brother to boot. But when Rand married Felicia... I was there and saw them, and as cynical as I am, not even I can deny they’re in love.”
He exhaled softly. “And that means I was wrong, and love is possible for us, if we look. If we find it—or it finds us. And especially after seeing Rand and Felicia more recently—seeing their relationship bloom, as it were—I found myself asking, if love could find a way past Rand’s resistance, which was every bit as strong as mine, then why couldn’t love come for me?”