The Saint Who Stole My Heart: A Regency Rogues Novel by Stefanie Sloane Page A

“I’m afraid not.” He grasped the box in both hands and turned it around, clearly searching for a lid. Though he pulled and pushed, the box remained shut, revealing nothing. He set it back down on the shelf and shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose it belonged to my father.”
    Elena craned her neck for a better view. “There’s no visible keyhole,” she said to herself, desperate to try her hand at opening the mysterious box, but loath to move any closer to the viscount.
    “Miss Barnes, are you here?” Lady Mowbray’s clear voice broke in, the sound of her skirts swishing as she marched toward the two. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were hiding from me.”
    “She is impossible to avoid,” the viscount said. “You might as well give me the box.”
    “We’ve still much to discuss,” the marchioness continued, the growing power of her voice signaling that she was drawing nearer. “I would like to give my modiste some idea of what we’re hoping for in terms of dresses.”
    Elena eyed the wooden box. She didn’t want to talk with Lady Mowbray at the moment. Especially about dresses. She grabbed the box and cradled it tightly, turning in the opposite direction of Lady Mowbray’s advancing voice.
    “You never saw me, my lord,” she whispered to the viscount over her shoulder, and then ran silently from the room.

 
    Dash padded silently along the west wing, Carrington House still as a grave in the night. The servants were abed and all was quiet, the faint noise of his bare feet brushing against the Axminster carpet the only sound to be heard.
    Why had Miss Barnes taken dinner in her room?
    More specifically,
why Miss Barnes
?
    The answer to the second question would suffice for the first as well.
    Dash slowed his steps, his conscience plaguing him. He’d revealed too much to her last night. And God, but she’d responded to him, her kindness and vulnerability running him through.
    And then he’d betrayed her. Turned his back and resumed his role as if her words had all meant nothing.
    Dash stopped and leaned his back against the wall. It was
something
. And Dash didn’t know how to make it stop.
    The talk with Bell had sorted things out. What he’d revealed reminded Dash of the responsibilities he bore to his father’s memory. And to his friends. He needed to move forward with finding Lady Afton’s killer. And he couldn’t do so with Miss Barnes under his roof. She was intensely distracting. But more than that, the longer she stayed, the more danger she was in. If he had any luck at all, each day would bring Dash closer to finding the Bishop—which would only place Miss Barnes within the killer’s grasp. The Bishop attacked the wives ofCorinthians. Not that Dash had any plans to marry Miss Barnes; quite the contrary. But his growing feelings for the woman surely wouldn’t do her any favors.
    Conservatively speaking, it should take no more than a fortnight for her to finish with the books and be gone. Unfortunately, he could not trust himself around the woman for such a length of time.
    Last night, he’d been caught off guard by the rush of unfamiliar emotions. He could not afford to make the same mistake again.
    Dash pushed off from the wall and continued toward Miss Barnes’s chamber. He needed the puzzle and what he hoped were valuable clues inside the box. He could not wait any longer.
    The carved wooden container was a burr puzzle. The box was meant to safeguard those things a Corinthian could not entrust to anyone else. Only the owner knew the cipher that allowed him to solve the puzzle and open the box. Dash’s earlier searches of the late viscount’s study had unearthed nothing nearly as promising as the box.
    Why had his father not told him of its existence? There could only be one reason: it contained information about the Afton case.
    He reached Miss Barnes’s door and pressed his ear to it. Hearing no movement within, he looked down the hall both ways, then placed his