Free Her Highness, My Wife by Victoria Alexander

more.
    “Yes?”
    He shook his head, then turned and strode toward the doors. He pulled them open and glanced back. “I warn you, this adventure of yours has no more significance to me than a business arrangement. And as such I will attach no more emotion to it than that.”
    She widened her eyes innocently. “I assure you I do not intend to allow my feelings for you to change in the slightest.”
    “Excellent.” Again, his expression was unreadable. “We shall make quite an interesting pair, Lord and Lady Matthew. A gentleman whose best quality is the ability to be annoying and a princess with a tendency toward lie—”
    “I prefer the term misstatement,” she said firmly.
    He laughed and turned to go.
    “Matthew?”
    He paused.
    “Will you miss me?”
    He grinned. “Only as the horse—”
    “Good day, my lord,” she said firmly, suppressing her own laugh. He took his leave and she stared unseeing at the doors that closed in his wake. Working her way back into this stubborn man's heart would not be easy. Finding the missing Heavens might well prove to be the easier of her quests.
    But not the most important.

    Chapter 5
    Matt threw open the door of the cottage and stared down the road as he had a dozen times or more in the hour since dawn. Where was the blasted woman? She should have been here by now. She was the one eager to get this farce under way. This was her adventure, not his. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Come to her senses and realized just how absurd this so-called adventure was. This mission of hers to retrace and document the travels of a fleeing princess half a century ago. He snorted with disdain. He could have come up with a better story without trying. Still, it served her purpose, whatever her purpose was. It was obviously more important to her than a silly history of her family. But what could be of such significance that she would come to him for help?
    Unless she chose him only because of his grandmother’s involvement. He turned away from the door and ran this hand through his hair. The question of why Tatiana had reappeared in his life had haunted him through the endless hours of the night past, just as it had the night before. He’d tossed and turned and scarcely slept more than an hour or so at best. Even when exhaustion had claimed him, he’d had no peace. His slumber was fraught with unanswered questions and all-too-vivid memories.
    Matt absently paced the length of the room, acknowledging in the back of his mind how often he’d walked this same stretch of floor trying to puzzle out a problem. Those difficulties were typically of a mechanical nature. This was different. This was personal. And far more difficult. At some point in the long, restless night he’d wondered if perhaps Tatiana’s true intentions had little to do with a long-dead relative and everything to do with the man she’d asked for help. If possibly it wasn’t
    the past of this Princess Sophia she searched for but a future with the man she’d once professed to love. It was a ridiculous thought, of course, triggered only by the startling clarity of his dreams and his own arrogance. While it was obvious at their last meeting that desire between them still simmered, it could go no further than that. He would not allow it, and in truth she had given him no reason to believe she wished otherwise.
    She had not thrown herself into his arms, declaring her undying love. She had not wept with remorse at having abandoned him. Her apology had been scarcely more than polite. Nor had she begged his forgiveness and pleaded for him to allow her back into his life. It was the height of irony to realize that he would have indeed forgiven her and more had she returned to him within the first months after her departure, even as long as a full year. He would have understood the reasons for her choice or, at least, wanted to understand and forgive. Now, it was too late. He had no wish to rekindle what they’d once shared. Aside