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“Cora wasn’t with me as her mistress was ill.” He frowned. “You don’t think…”
Valentine searched his face for signs of deceit, but the man’s dark eyes were heavy with worry. “I wouldn’t put anything past Lady Bronwyn. If I had to guess, I would say the maid went with her. They had to have had help. There’s no way they could have vanished on their own.”
But even as he said the words, Valentine knew that Bronwyn was more than capable of being resourceful. For all his protestations to the contrary, she was a spy. A smart, practical, devious spy. Any of the sailors onboard could have deployed the footbridge and let her off the ship with enough coin or a piece of jewelry. She wasn’t poor, and he hadn’t thought to confiscate her possessions. Finding who had helped her would be like locating a needle in a haystack.Impossible. He ground his jaw and cursed under his breath.
He’d underestimated her…again.
“You go back to London with the ship,” he said eventually. “I’ll stay in Brest, see what I can find out. She couldn’t have gotten far. Someone had to have seen her leaving the docks.”
Rawley frowned. “Two heads will make quicker work together.”
“He should go with you,” Lisbeth said with a nod. “I can stay with the ship.”
Valentine wanted to object, but it made sense for him to have help. A part of him wanted to be alone so when he did eventually get his hands on his little fugitive, he could punish her in private for daring to run from him. But two people meant more avenues could be covered. Brest wasn’t a huge city but it was a port, and there were other ships. She could have gone on to England on another vessel, or even gone toward to Paris. The train station had been recently built, the leg between Guingamp and Brest finished in the last year.
“Very well,” he said. He didn’t want to lose any more time. The longer they waited, the less chance he had of catching up or finding her, wherever she’d vanished. It would take at least a good few hours for the ship to be thoroughly searched, but he knew that Lisbeth would have it in hand. This was her operation, after all. “If you find anything, send a cable when you dock in England. I’ll do the same.”
She tugged on his sleeve, her voice going low. “Val, don’t do anything rash.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your feelings are tangled up in this woman,” she said. He opened his mouth to deny it, but the hard look on her face stopped him. “If I were in her shoes, I would have left, too. It’s not personal, but you need to exercise wisdom when you do find her. There are too many open-ended questions. I’ve thought about it more, and we need her help.”
“Do you know who she is,” he whispered furiously. “Or have you bloody forgotten?”
“An operative who has foiled nefarious plots against our leaders.”
He scowled. “And stolen confidential documents.”
“You don’t know that,” she returned. “They could have been given to her by someone in the Home Office, and that person could be working for the queen herself. You of all people understand how it works—we don’t always know who is part of the network at any given time. We need more information to be sure before we expose her to the wolves.”
His mouth pulled tight, but she had a point. “Fine. I won’t throw her to the ground and restrain her in my handcuffs the minute I find her.” Valentine felt the flush flood his cheekbones as his helpful brain supplied a very lewd image to accompany his words.
The small laugh at his expense and the knowing look in Lisbeth’s eyes made him blink. “Well, I’ll never advise you not to do that in the right circumstance, Your Grace. A little consensual bed sport between friends can be quite diverting.”
He ignored that, along with the visions supplied by his vexing imagination. His ears burned at the provocative idea of using the cuffs in a more carnal way. He wondered whether Bronwyn would consent to such a thing and then cursed himself in the same breath. This wasn’t the time to be daydreaming!
Valentine shook his head. “Where would you go?” he asked his former partner, who was still watching him with a too-intense expression as if trying to confirm that he could be trusted to do right thing. Hewould! Maybe. Women’s intuition was a valuable thing and he respected Lisbeth’s opinion. Perhaps she could shed some light on a dismal situation. “If you were her?”
Lisbeth’s grin widened. “You mean if I were an intrepid, daring, clever international agent who had thwarted my pursuers by feigning illness and pretending to be asleep in bed by means of a very devious trick, all the while planning my escape off a passenger liner in the middle of the evening when my enemies were distracted?”
“Yes.” His humor soured further. “Thank you for the succinct summary.”
She lifted her brows. “Of course, I have an idea of where.”
“Are you going to make me beg, Lisbeth?”
She laughed and cocked her head. “Do allow me my fun, Val. It’s rather entertaining watching a jejune chit wind her frustratingly wily webs around you. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say deep down, you were pretending to hate it. Secretly, you admire that she outmaneuvered you, the spymaster prince himself.”
His jaw ached from grinding his teeth. “I do not.”
She let out a scoffing noise. “Answer me this. Tell me you haven’t felt more alive in the past weeks than you have in a long time?”
Valentine had, but that was no one’s business but his. He didn’t admire the girl; he wanted to lock her in a room and throw away the key. Preferably with him in there.
With a pair of handcuffs.
Growling at his own absurdity, he pinched the bridge of his nose and banished his salacious and categorically unwelcome fantasies. “If you’re not going to be helpful, I am leaving.”
