Satisfaction gusted through him. Valentine knew it! He knew that blasted man was involved somehow. There was the scrape of two chairs along the floor, which meant that they were leaving. Hurrying from the corridor, he rounded the room and nearly crashed into his quarry, her beautiful and treacherous blue eyes widening in recognition. The person she’d been whispering with had already gone.

“Thornbury.”

“Who was that?” he growled.

“My acquaintance,” she said softly. “The one who I needed to meet with. I was coming back to you, I swear. I took a chance that my contact might be here and I was lucky. I wasn’t running away, I promise you.”

“I don’t care about your promises.” His jaw clenched. “What was his fucking name?”

“Her name,” she whispered. “Mary Richards.”

Valentine frowned, the name not ringing any immediate bells, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d been out of the game for some time, and Sommers’s case had been handed off to another operative. “Who is she?”

Bronwyn shook her head. “Not here.”

If he clenched his jaw any harder, his teeth were going to shatter, but she was right. This was an open public space and anyone could be listening. He’d just done it himself. “Fine. We are going back to the ship, and you are going to tell me everything from start to finish, do you understand me? No more lies, no more detours, no more games.”

“My things are at the hotel.”

“I’ll send Lisbeth for them.”

The sound of the woman’s name—and what she clearly represented—made Bronwyn flinch as if she had an inkling of what was coming her way. She gave him a weak nod, though resentment glinted in her eyes before her lashes dipped to hide her expression. The Bronwyn he had come to know in less than a day would have something up her sleeve. She was not the sort to capitulate so quickly and so easily. In another life, he might have admired what the Americans called gumption. She had it in spades, but she was on the wrong side of things. The wrong side of him.

Why did that grate more than it should? He barely knew her.

You know her well enough to have been inside her.

That had nothing to do with anything, but the reminder didn’t help. He’d coupled with a thief, a turncoat, a liar, and God knew what else. Inexplicably enraged at his own stupidity in falling for a master thespian, Valentine took her by the elbow and she didn’t protest his unyielding grip as he led her to a hansom.

“The docks,” he ordered the coachman.