The Hallucinatory Duke

by Meta Mathews

  Jack, appearing thoroughly dishevelled and somehow more handsome because of it, stared back at her.

  She unlocked the door and jerked it open. Jack looked so wonderful standing there—so real and so steady and so permanent—that she simply stepped into his arms.

  “Hey,” he murmured. She could judge from his slight hesitation that she had surprised him, but his reaction was everything she could have hoped for.

  He pulled her close, and she rested her head against his shoulder. His fragrance, which already seemed as familiar and as comforting to her as the smell of brewing tea, filled her nostrils and soothed her jumpy nerves.

  His T-shirt was soft against her face, and his warmth that seeped through the worn cotton brought with it the realisation that she’d been physically chilled by the duke’s presence. Thank heavens Jack was here now, to counteract that horrible sense of disconnect that had inundated her when she’d awoken to find the duke in bed with her.

  Jack didn’t speak until she finally lifted her head off his shoulder. Even then, he still held her close, and his breath tickled her ear and sent delicious tingles dashing down her spine. “He’s been here, hasn’t he?” he asked.

  She shivered and pulled back. “Yes.” She grasped his hand and pulled him inside. “I assume you’re here because you also had a visitor.”

  He nodded. “That same female, of course. But tonight I forced her to talk to me, and I learned a few things. Just as we thought, she was married to the duke, but she admitted that she’d had lovers before her marriage. That’s why she’s so knowledgeable about men, but I wouldn’t let her touch me tonight.”

  Amelia shivered again. “The duke tried to touch me, but I made him stop. Although he disappeared when you rang the doorbell, I felt especially unnerved this time. Chilled, even. Come on, I’ll brew us some coffee.” She headed for the kitchen.

  Jack closed the door and followed her. “Ben told me you don’t like coffee.”

  “I’ll drink almost anything that will warm me up and help me stay awake.” She retrieved a drip coffeemaker from the pantry and pulled a bag of coffee from the freezer.

  “You freeze your coffee?” Jack had seated himself at a stool pulled up to the bar.

  “Freezing keeps it fresh, which is pretty important when you only use it once every six months or so.”

  “Gotcha,” Jack murmured.

  As soon as she got the coffee started, she turned back around and propped her elbows on the counter across from Jack. Their faces were almost touching, so she closed her eyes and inhaled the fragrance of his aftershave, a delicious blend of citrus and spice that screamed male, male and that entered her bloodstream like an aphrodisiac. She straightened and took a step back. Based on their conversation earlier that evening, she figured they’d end up in bed sooner or later, but she also knew that now wasn’t the time. “So what happened this evening?”

  “After I left here, I went by Ben’s. He’s more than ever convinced that we’re legitimate descendants of the Duke of Durbane and he’s getting impatient to prove it.”

  “So what else is new? Literally, I mean. After you left Ben and went home. Was Amy waiting for you?”

  “No. She arrived after I went to sleep. But I woke up when she touched me. This wasn’t a dream.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told her to leave, that I didn’t want anything more to do with her.”

  “And what did she do?”

  “She was already irritated with me, and my refusal to let her touch me merely made her angrier. She claimed that I am bothering her, rather than the other way around. But before that she said something I really didn’t understand. She said I should stop romanticising the past. I started to tell her I wasn’t romanticising anything, because I don’t know what the hell is going on, but she didn’t wait around to listen. I blinked and she was gone.”

  “You know, this whole thing is getting stranger and stranger.”

  Jack rubbed his eyes. “Is that coffee almost ready?”

  Four short beeps from the coffeemaker provided the answer he was looking for.

  Amelia opened a cabinet door and pulled out a couple of mugs. “How do you take your coffee?”

  “Black.”

  “Good. I have cream, but I don’t have any of that artificial sweetener that Ben likes so much.” She poured two cups and set one on the counter in front of Jack.

  Jack wrapped his hands around the mug. “What happened between you and the duke tonight?”

  “We had a conversation.” Amelia picked up her coffee and blew on the steaming liquid, then set it down again. “I don’t know what year he’s coming from, but he mentioned Amy, so I’m guessing it was after they were married.”

  “And we know now that she’s the one visiting me.”

  “Why either of them would be visiting either of us is a question I can’t answer, unless it’s because Ben has us researching them. But I’ve researched a lot of people from the past during my studies and this is the first time any of them have ever visited me.”

  “It’s almost as though they have something to hide.”

  “Or something they want us to discover.”

  “If that’s the case, why don’t they just tell us whatever it that they want us to know and then go away?”

  Amelia shrugged. “Beats me.”

  Jack took a sip of coffee. “I did a lot of reading before I went to sleep tonight but I still don’t see why you and Ben are so interested in the Hardwicke Marriage Act, unless you think Amy’s mother was illegitimate.”

  “Oh, there’s no doubt that Miss Comstock was illegitimate. What makes her being born on the wrong side of the blanket important is the fact that she and Mr Pennycut were married by licence and she was a minor. This means, according to the law at that time, Miss Comstock didn’t really have parents, which means no one could have given her the required permission to marry as a minor, thus making the marriage void.”

  Jack stared at her. “Did no one think it important at the time of Miss Comstock’s wedding?”

  “I’m sure they didn’t. After all, no one could have foreseen that the Pennycuts would have a daughter, Amy, who would grow up and attract the attention of Jackson Lattimore, third son of the Duke of Durbane.”

  “Third son? Oh that’s right, he was third in line for the dukedom. I believe Uncle Ben said Jackson’s father had expected him to go into the church.”

  “That’s correct. But then illness struck the neighbourhood. The duke and both the older sons died within days of each other. Suddenly Jackson became the sixth Duke of Durbane, and little Amy Pennycut was a duchess.”

  “So I’m assuming this is when her mother’s illegitimacy became important.”

  “Yes, particularly to one person. Jackson and his cousin Charles were the only living heirs to the dukedom, meaning Charles was next in line. However, if Jackson and Amy had a legitimate son, he, of course, would precede Charles. Charles questioned the legitimacy of the duke’s marriage to Amy based on Amy’s mother being illegitimate and a minor, which would have voided her marriage and made Amy illegitimate. It’s believed he did this after discovering that Amy was expecting a child.”

  “If Jackson’s and Amy’s marriage was void as a result, their son would not have been the heir, right?”

  “Correct. As strange as that seems to us now, that was the law then.”

  “Then how on earth does Uncle Ben think he could be a legitimate heir to the dukedom?”

  “That particular paragraph of the act resulted in so many problems that Parliament did away with it in 1822 and made the change retroactive. This would have meant that Jackson’s and Amy’s children were legitimate after all. But by this time, Amy supposedly had left England bound for America and Jackson had disappeared. Ben thinks Amy was pregnant with the future duke when she arrived in America.”

  “Do you suppose she really was?”

  “I don’t know. When I was transcribing the Comstock woman’s diary, I�
�d just come to a very interesting point. She was saying that Amy had arrived to visit her and was worried that her marriage could be voided so that her baby would not be the duke’s legal heir. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read any further. The following pages had been torn out of the diary.”

  Jack slapped a hand to his forehead. “Damn. I forgot to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  He ran a hand into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a business-sized envelope. “When I stopped by Ben’s this evening, he gave me this to pass along to you. He said something about it containing pages from the diary.”

  Chapter Seven

  Struggling to keep her hand from trembling, Amelia reached for the envelope. “Where did he get these?”

  “He said someone must have torn the pages out of the diary and then stuck them back in loose. He suspects Martha Comstock was responsible, but we’ll never know for sure. In any case, they apparently fell out of the diary and into the bag he’d carried onto the plane coming from England. He ran across these pages when he was filing some of the other papers he’d brought back with him.”

  Ben had folded the brittle sheets in order to fit them into the envelope, which made Amelia long to call him up right now in the wee morning hours and inform him that he was an idiot, but she refrained. She didn’t want to get tied up on the phone with Ben when she could be reading the pages from the diary instead.

  She carried them over to her desk, gently unfolded them, and turned her lamp on. She bent over to get a closer look.

  Jack had followed her and now stood just slightly behind her right side. She felt his body heat and leaned sideways just a bit, so their shoulders were touching. She needed that right now, the feel of someone real and solid and sane. She needed to feel Jack beside her.

  He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as though to steady her. “Are those the pages you were missing?” he asked.

  “I think so. Pull up a chair and I’ll see if I can read the writing. This is more faded than most of the pages have been.” She reluctantly moved away from his comforting embrace to open a desk drawer and retrieve a magnifying glass. Then she sat down.

  A second later, she nodded. “Yes, this takes up where the other entries left off. If I read slowly, can you type the words into the file I have open on the computer?”

  “Sure thing.” He moved an extra chair up to the desk. “Okay. I’m ready. Can you make out the next entry?”

  Amelia squinted as she moved the magnifying glass back and forth. “Yes, I think I can read this now. Here we go.

  “Durbane’s cousin Charles called on us today. He said he will drop the court case against the marriage if Amy will agree to leave the country. He offered to buy both of us passage on a ship bound for America, along with giving each of us several thousand pounds if we will quietly slip away.” Amelia took a deep breath. “It’s apparently just as Ben has always suspected. Amy came to America. I don’t think he had any reason to think that her cousin Martha accompanied her.”

  “So apparently the duchess believed the courts would declare her marriage void,” Jack said.

  “Obviously she feared that was a possibility, and with good reason. But perhaps there’s more in the diary about her thoughts.” Amelia picked up the magnifying glass and started reading again. “I tried to talk Amy out of going. She’s a duchess here, but in America, she would be just another citizen. That was when she confessed there’s a possibility the baby isn’t Durbane’s. Apparently, her morals are no better than those of our grandmother. Amy has agreed to Charles’ offer. I suppose I shall go also. There’s nothing to hold me in England and the money would buy me a comfortable life in America. I fear for the duke’s life once we are gone and I told Amy so, but she merely laughed. She said he will agree that their marriage is void so he can marry again. But my real fears regard Charles and what he might do to attain the dukedom.”

  Jack stopped typing and rested his hands on the desktop. “Dear God,” he murmured. “I can’t believe Ben wants to be related to these people. Frankly I pray that we don’t turn out to be related to that family.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Amelia murmured. She’d been reading ahead. “Martha Comstock writes that when Charles came to visit again, she told him that Amy had lost the baby.”

  “Wow! Guess Uncle Ben didn’t know that.”

  “Obviously he didn’t. But Martha’s wording is a bit suspicious. She told Charles that Amy lost the baby, but she never actually says Amy miscarried. Perhaps she lied to Charles so he wouldn’t know there was a possibility of an heir being born.”

  “Damn! You could be right. I’d love to know whether the duke really fathered a child. Why don’t we see if the diary contains any more clues? That is, if your eyes will hold out.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Amelia picked up the magnifying glass again. “Next entry—Charles has stopped visiting now that he thinks Amy is no longer carrying a potential heir. Amy is so distressed that I fear she might really lose the baby. I think she believed Charles had fallen in love with her, but clearly his reasons for visiting her in the past no longer exist.”

  She paused to let Jack catch up on the keyboard. When he’d finished typing, he looked up and grimaced. “Obviously Amy is still carrying some man’s baby.”

  Amelia nodded ruefully. “I agree. But Charles doesn’t know that, which to his mind means he is now the only heir to Jackson.”

  “And if Jackson were dead, then Charles would be the duke.”

  “You know…” Amelia sat in thought for a few seconds.

  “What?”

  “The duke disappeared shortly after that ship left for America—the one with Amy Pennycut’s name on the passenger list.”

  “Right. Everyone assumed she was on the ship and that he followed her and met with some sort of misadventure.”

  “But what if he never left England? What if Charles killed him and hid the body? With the duke having disappeared without leaving an heir, Charles figured he would eventually inherit the dukedom.”

  “So did he?”

  “No, he didn’t live long enough to do so. He tried to get Jackson declared dead, but without a body, that’s a long process. Charles only lived about four years after the duke disappeared, so when Jackson was eventually declared dead, there were no heirs and the dukedom became extinct.”

  “But if Amy had actually given birth to a legitimate heir, there’s a possibility the dukedom could be reinstated, right?”

  “Exactly, which is what Ben is hoping for. But the question remains, did Amy give birth to a living child and, if so, was Jackson that baby’s father?”

  “Do you suppose, assuming the duke was murdered, that he was unsettled enough to come back when you started researching his life?”

  “Ouch!” Amelia pushed away from the desk and jumped to her feet. “Ow! Ow! Ow!”

  Jack also jumped up, his eyes wide with concern. “Amelia, what’s wrong?”

  “The bastard’s making my thigh burn and I didn’t even say hell.” She ripped off her robe and pulled her nightshirt up to the top of her legs. “Can you see anything? Is my leg turning red?”

  Jack bent over and stared at her thigh. “No, it’s not red. But wait, there’s a spot here that’s changing colour.” He laid a couple of fingers on the top of her thigh just at the base of her panties. “Is this where the pain’s situated?”

  “Oh, well, hmmm…” Amelia hated sounding incoherent, but Jack’s touch on her upper thigh was creating warmth that had nothing to do with the pain she was experiencing on the tattoo site.

  But he’d asked a question and deserved an answer. “Yes, that’s the spot.”

  “Oh, I see now. It’s a butterfly. I didn’t realise you had a tattoo.”

  “My tattoo’s back,” Amelia yelped, bending over to look at the top of her thigh. Sure enough, her little yellow butterfly had returned and the pain had completely disappeared. “Do you know what this means?”

  “Ah, n
o. I’m afraid not. Had your tattoo gone somewhere?”

  “That bastard duke made it go away but now it’s back. That means he’s gone for good.”

  “That’s great news, but not if you’re in pain as a result.”

  “It’s fading quickly. In fact it’s all gone now. We must have solved the mystery surrounding the duke’s disappearance when we speculated that Charles had murdered him and hidden the body.”

  “But what about Amy? Do you suppose she’ll leave me alone now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the diary will tell us more about what happened to Amy.” Amelia sat back down and picked up the magnifying glass. “Wow, this section is in really bad shape. The ink is faded and the paper is cracking where Ben folded it.”

  Jack had also sat down and was holding his fingers above the keyboard, ready to type whenever Amelia could decipher any of the Comstock woman’s writing.

  “It says…darn, this is fading quickly, but I think it says something about Charles turning his back on her and Amy. Yes, I can read it now.

  “Although Charles swore he had bought our passage on a ship to America, he has not sent word regarding the ship, nor has he sent the money he promised us. I fear that he has betrayed us and we are now without friends we can turn to for help.”

  Jack swivelled in his chair to stare at Amelia. “Since Charles thought Amy had miscarried and he didn’t have to worry about the duke having a legitimate heir, he obviously lost all interest in Amy. But if she didn’t come to America, I wonder what became of her.”

  “I have no idea.” Amelia turned to the last of the pages that had been torn from the journal. “Strange. This entry is dated six months after the previous one.

  “Amy is gone. She met a man passing through the neighbourhood. He was an American who appeared to be relatively wealthy, in that he is travelling all about England and Scotland and keeping a diary about his travels. He seemed quite impressed with Amy’s beauty and asked her to return to America with him. She agreed on the condition that he accept the child as his own, and they are gone. I am sure I will never see her or her little boy again. She told the man her name is Amy Butler, so there is no danger of her ever being traced to the duke. I don’t know why she’s concerned, since she swears the baby belongs to the duke’s footman. No doubt Amy will live a life of ease with her new conquest. I wonder if he knows she can bear no more children.