“I am the highest-ranking peer on this ship, and a lady is missing. If you don’t intend to have her disappearance on your conscience, you will do as I say. Every nook and cranny must be searched. Get your men on it, now.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Rawley cleared his throat. “Where do you want me?”

“Was her maid with you?” Valentine asked. “The small blond-haired chit. I did not see her in the room this morning. You two are courting, are you not?”

“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.