The Pursuits of Lord Kit Cavanaugh (The Cavanaughs #2) - Stephanie Laurens

CHAPTER 1

September 18, 1843

On the Bath Road east of Bristol

“Steady, lads.” Lord Christopher Cavanaugh, known to most as Kit, drew his matched bays to a stamping halt on the rough grass of the roadside lookout. The high-bred horses shifted and snorted; having recently rested in an inn’s stable while Kit and his companions partook of luncheon, the pair were eager to run again.

But Kit wanted a moment to look ahead—at the roofs, towers, and spires, and the glinting silver-gray ribbon of rivers that made up the city of Bristol, displayed like a colorful patchwork in the shallow valley at the end of their road.

The day was cool but fine, with a fitful breeze meandering up the valley. Eyes narrowing, Kit surveyed the city he planned to make his home. Today would see his first true step into the future he was determined to craft and claim.

He’d been adrift all his life, with no rudder to guide him and no port to call his home. For the past decade—ever since he’d come on the town—he’d had no direction, no goal... No. Not true. His one aim—his single focused goal—had been to avoid the fate his mother, Lavinia, the late Dowager Marchioness of Raventhorne, had planned for him.

She’d been a schemer of near-unimaginable degree, intent on controlling and exploiting the lives of her four children for her own gain. In Kit’s case—as for his older and younger brothers—she’d expected to barter the position of their wives for wealth or, at the very least, valuable influence. Kit had reacted by painting himself as an indolent rake of the sort no sane parent would want anywhere near their daughter. His reputation in the ton had become a solid shield, one that had enabled him to walk society’s halls without fear of being trapped in order to help his younger sister, Stacie, avoid a similar fate.

Lavinia had been a demon in human guise. They—her four children—had been beyond shocked when they’d finally learned the full gamut of her evil schemes. She’d tried to kill her stepson, Ryder, Kit’s older half brother, whom Kit and his siblings adored, in order to replace Ryder, then the marquess, with her eldest son, Kit’s older brother Rand; only Ryder’s remarkable strength, physical and mental, and the support of his wife, Mary, then the marchioness, had allowed them both to survive. Subsequently captured, Lavinia had lost her life in a vain attempt to flee justice.

Even now, the thought of her and her doings chilled Kit’s heart.

His mother had died in the summer of 1837, bringing to an abrupt end a chapter in his and his siblings’ lives that they all had thought would never end. Nevertheless, it had taken years for the effects of her version of mothering to start to fade—for Rand, Kit, Stacie, and their youngest brother, Godfrey, to shed the invisible chains and adjust their now-instinctive, habitual reactions toward others as well as themselves.

Or, Kit temporized, at least shake loose enough of those chains to take up the challenge of shaping their own lives and make a start.

For Rand—arguably the most impacted by their mother’s schemes, but also the oldest of the four siblings and possessing a quiet inner strength similar to Ryder’s implacable will—that had meant becoming a leading light in investor circles, specializing in supporting promising inventions. Less than a month ago, Rand had taken what Kit saw as the final step in emerging from their shared past by marrying Felicia Throgmorton, the daughter of one of the inventors Rand had backed.

Kit had seen Rand and Felicia two days ago, when they’d driven over from their new house to visit with Ryder and Mary at Raventhorne Abbey, the family’s ancestral pile, where, since the wedding, Kit had been staying. Contentment had settled about Rand like a cloak, and a species of happiness had infused his eyes and his expression whenever he’d looked at Felicia, leaving Kit to surmise that Rand and Felicia were well on the way to finding the same sense of settled peace and relaxed joy in life that Ryder had found with Mary.

The atmosphere of happy family life that now pervaded the Abbey was something Kit had never experienced over the decades he’d called the Abbey home. He envied his nephews and niece—Ryder and Mary’s children—the warmth and unqualified acceptance in which they were growing up. The unstated yet all-embracing love and support of their parents.

Having watched Rand steadily making his own way—his own name—in society and beyond, Kit had decided it was