The Hallucinatory Duke

by Meta Mathews

  Fortunately, her bed was occupied only by Wellington, and he had absolutely no interest in her state of undress. Still, when she dropped the towel, she grabbed a robe and slipped it on. No sense in taking unnecessary chances, she decided as she headed towards her bedside table to retrieve her cell phone and play back her message.

  Ben’s voice greeted her. “Good morning, Amelia. I need to see you, but I have class until eleven-thirty. I won’t be able to get to the diner before noon, so you need to get there early and save our usual booth.” He’d hung up without bothering to ask if she was available.

  “Oh, I’ll be there, Ben,” she muttered aloud. “And I’ll be early because I can’t wait to return this damn diary to you and get the hell out of this situation.”

  She tried to pretend that her thigh hadn’t just started burning in the spot where her tattoo had once been, but the pain was worse than usual. The damn duke must be nearby watching—or listening—or maybe she really was losing her mind. Determined to get rid of the diary as soon as possible, she hurried to dress then practically ran out of the door.

  * * * *

  One good thing about her hasty exit from her apartment was her early arrival at the diner. Past experience had taught her that she needed to arrive by ten-thirty if she had any hopes of tying up the back booth that Ben preferred. She’d also learned over time that if it was already occupied when she got there, she should find a seat nearby, then be prepared to make a dash for the booth when it became free.

  The second she pushed the diner door open, her gaze zeroed in on the booth of her choice and she bit back an oath. A lone man sat in Ben’s usual place on the far side of the booth with a cup of coffee in front of him and a newspaper propped up on the ketchup bottle. His head was bent, giving the impression that he was reading the paper, and might well have plans to be there for a while.

  The aroma of coffee and hot cinnamon rolls reminded her that she’d had only iced tea for breakfast. She gave Betty her usual wave that meant Bring me tea and a menu, then perused the tables close to the rear of the dining room to try to locate an empty seat.

  As she scanned the area, her gaze homed in on the man sitting in the back booth. He’d raised his head and was lifting his coffee cup towards his mouth. “Damn,” she muttered. “No wonder I thought that head of dark hair looked familiar.”

  She stalked to the back of the restaurant and paused beside the man who was occupying Ben’s favourite booth. He glanced up and she grimaced. It was almost certainly the duke, except instead of his usual coat, vest and intricately tied cravat, today he was clad in a black turtleneck and a tan sport coat. He looked fantastic in modern clothes, but his presence here infuriated her. It was bad enough that he’d been harassing her in her apartment. She had no intention of allowing him to spoil her enjoyment of the diner. She slammed her purse down on the table.

  “Blast you! What in hell do you think you’re doing here? And if you make my thigh start burning again because I said hell, I’ll dump your coffee over your head and see if you enjoy being burnt.”

  The man immediately slapped his hand over his coffee cup, obviously intending to keep it anchored to the table, and scowled. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else, Miss. I’m waiting here for—oh my God. Are you Amelia Comstock, Uncle Ben’s researcher?”

  “Uncle Ben?” Amelia frowned in confusion. What was going on here? First this man had invaded the privacy of her bedroom and now he was in the diner, sitting in Ben’s seat, claiming to be Ben’s nephew.

  She placed her palms flat on the table to steady herself, then leant forward to stare into the man’s eyes. “What are you trying to pull here? Ben’s never mentioned a nephew. Say, have you been dressing up and slipping into my apartment? I’ll bet you have. Come to think of it, Ben has a key to my apartment and if you’re really his nephew—”

  The man jumped to his feet. “Stop right there. I’ve never been in your apartment. I don’t even know for sure who you are and I certainly don’t know where you… Wait a minute.” Frowning, he leaned closer to her face. “You look very much like that woman from the past who keeps appearing unexpectedly in my…”

  He dropped back onto the bench. When he looked at her again, he appeared dazed, his eyes wide with disbelief. “But that woman has dark hair, not blonde, and her hair is longer than yours,” he said, his tone vague. “Plus, her dress is like something out of a Jane Austen movie. On the other hand, you have her eyes, her mouth…” His gaze dropped to her chest. “The same size…never mind.”

  Trembling, Amelia slid onto the bench opposite him. She swallowed hard in a suddenly dry throat. Where is Betty with my tea? She took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s be reasonable. Are you saying that you’ve had a visitor resembling me who appeared to be from a previous century?”

  He snorted. “You consider that reasonable? Personally, I think we’re both crazy.”

  “Speak for yourself. I’ve had a few strange encounters in my dreams lately, but the reasons are perfectly logical.”

  “Oh, yeah?” His dark eyebrows rose in a question. “As it happens, I’ve had a few strange encounters myself. Want to share those perfectly logical reasons with me?”

  “No,” she said emphatically. “So, why are you here in Ben’s place?”

  He sighed. “My uncle asked me to meet with you. He said you’d be here early and we could compare notes. Not to change the subject abruptly, but why does Uncle Ben have a key to your apartment?”

  “Because…” She paused as his implication sank in. “Good God, are you thinking…? Yuck! No! He has a key to my apartment because he stops by to feed Wellington whenever I’m away from home.”

  His lips twisted into a sickly smile and he leant back as though to distance himself from her. “You…eh… Are you saying the Duke of Wellington lives with you?”

  Amelia clenched her teeth. The blasted man was serious! “You’re determined to think I’m a mental case, aren’t you?” She answered his sickly smile with a snarl. “Okay, I’ll admit it. The Duke of Wellington moved in with me but only after Napoleon Bonaparte moved out. They said they simply couldn’t coexist under the same roof.”

  He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “No need to get snarky. You’ll have to admit that it sounded strange. I suppose Wellington is your dog.”

  “Cat, actually. Welly wouldn’t appreciate being called a dog.”

  “My apologies to your cat. Look, Ms Comstock, why don’t we stop sniping at each other and attempt to conduct a normal conversation?”

  “I’m not sure either of us is capable of normal, but I’m willing to give it a try just as soon as I get my tea and something to eat.” She looked around for Betty, who had disappeared, hopefully into the kitchen for a glass of tea.

  “You’re a tea drinker, are you?”

  Amelia cut her gaze back to him and lowered her brows. His tone sounded somewhat accusatory. “What are you suggesting?”

  “It was just a comment. Don’t be so prickly.”

  “I’m sorry, but I tend to feel prickly when someone insinuates that I’ve misplaced my mental faculties in another century.”

  He sighed. “You certainly can read a lot into a simple question.”

  “Sorry. When I’m this hungry, my sense of humour goes on strike. Oh good, here comes Betty.”

  As soon as the waitress paused beside the table, Amelia flashed her brightest smile and reached for the huge plastic glass filled with ice and tea. “You’re an angel, Betty. What’s on that plate?”

  Betty eased her tray onto the corner of the table. “I figured you’d be hungry and the daily special is one of your favourites. Country fried steak, creamed potatoes with gravy, and green beans. But if you don’t want it, I’ll find someone else to give it to.” She cast a sideways glance at Amelia’s companion.

  Amelia grabbed the plate. “You’re a lifesaver, Betty. I assume the yeast roll is mine too, but who’s the pecan pie for?”

  “I thought your handsome friend might lik
e some pie to go along with all that coffee he’s been consuming.”

  She slid the pie in front of him without waiting for his response. “Say, are you related to Professor Durban? You two look a lot alike.”

  Amelia answered for him. “Yep, they’re related. He’s Ben’s nephew.”

  “I suspected something like that,” Betty said, nodding. She glanced around the diner. “I’d better go. The place is filling up and folks want their food.”

  “Don’t forget refills for my tea,” Amelia yelled towards Betty’s back.

  Betty waved a hand in the air to acknowledge the command, then stopped to wait on another table.

  Ben’s nephew ignored his pie but took another sip of coffee. “I take it you and my uncle come here often.”

  Amelia stopped cutting her steak long enough to look across the table and respond. “Yes. In fact, the way Ben acts, you’d think he owns this back booth.”

  “That sounds like him.”

  “Speaking of Ben, I wonder why he never mentioned having a nephew.” Amelia forked up a piece of steak, plopped it into her mouth, and moaned with sheer pleasure as the combined flavours of gravy and beef brought ecstasy to her taste buds.

  Then she realised she’d closed her eyes and thrown her head back much as she did when the hallucinatory duke brought her to a climax. She quickly swallowed, straightened and looked across the table in an attempt to judge whether her actions might have seemed familiar to her companion.

  He was watching her with an enigmatic smile. Damn him!

  “So.” She narrowed her eyes. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Jonathon, but my friends call me Jack.”

  “Jack?”

  He turned his head slightly, as though to observe her from the corners of his eyes. “Why do you say Jack in that tone of voice?”

  “Ever hear of a man named Jackson who was the sixth Duke of Durbane?”

  “Of course. Uncle Ben is convinced that we’re descended from Jackson, who, as I’m sure you know, was the last duke before the title was declared extinct.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of all that. Ben thinks the Duchess of Durbane left England for America while pregnant with the future duke. Since her husband disappeared soon after, it’s assumed he tried to follow her and was lost at sea, or died through some other misadventure.”

  Jack sighed. “What makes Ben so positive that, even assuming the duchess had the baby in America, he’s descended from that child?”

  Amelia paused with her fork halfway to her mouth and regarded her companion. Now that she looked more closely, he didn’t really resemble the duke all that much. Sure, their colouring was the same, but Jack was good-looking in an entirely different way. She liked the crinkles around his eyes that suggested he smiled frequently, and she was amazingly attracted to the shape of his lips, which were a tad fuller than the duke’s. She bet he’d be a wonderful kisser.

  But in addition to all of that, there was a familiar air about him, almost as though she’d met him at some point in the past. “Any chance I’ve ever seen you with Ben?” she asked, just before lifting a forkful of potatoes to her mouth.

  “No, I’ve never visited him in Atlanta, and I just moved here myself less than a month ago. Why?”

  She savoured the potatoes for a minute before swallowing. “Just wondering. For a minute I thought… Never mind. Did you ask me a question?”

  He shrugged. “I did. It was about the reason behind Ben’s obsession with the duke, but I’ll bet it’s related to the similarity between the duke’s title name of Durbane and our surname of Durban. It’s just like Uncle Ben to extrapolate a relationship from such scant evidence.”

  Impressed in spite of herself, Amelia regarded him with new respect. “I suspect you’re right. Frankly, even with all the research I’ve done on the subject, I haven’t found even a hint of a connection between Ben and the Duke of Durbane, but Ben is too obsessed to listen to reason.”

  “Speaking of reason, have you told Ben about the duke invading your dreams?”

  “Do I look like I’m a glutton for punishment? Of course I haven’t told him. He’d be calling in the psychics. I’m sure you haven’t told him about the woman who’s been visiting you.”

  He grimaced. “Unfortunately, he actually interrupted one of the visitations—for want of a more descriptive word. Naturally, when I told him what had been happening, he was merely encouraged.”

  Amelia laid her fork down, leant forward and lowered her voice. “Are your encounters with this woman—oh, I’m not sure how to phrase this question—does she do all the…that is, does she pleasure you without your having to participate in any way?”

  Jack’s face slowly changed in colour, from normal to pink to dark crimson. “Why do you ask? Is that what happens with your—ah—strange encounters?”

  Amelia nodded. She could feel her own blush darkening her face. “Why do you suppose this is happening to us?”

  “Obviously it has something to do with this research we’re involved in. You know, don’t you, that Comstock was the maiden name of the mother of the woman who married the duke?”

  “Yes, I know, and frankly I’m a little worried. Ben brought a diary back from his most recent trip to England. He says it was written by a woman named Martha Comstock. He passed it along to me to transcribe, but I was planning to give it back to him today and quit this job.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m sick of these strange visits from the past, and I now suspect that Ben thinks I’m descended from the duchess’s cousin, which if true would make Ben and me extremely distant cousins of some sort, assuming he’s descended from the duke. I don’t care whether Ben’s a duke or not. I just want some sort of normalcy back in my life.”

  Jack shook his head. “I doubt it will be as easy as quitting your job. We’ve stirred up something, and I suspect we’re going to have to see this through before either of our lives will get back to normal.”

  Amelia sighed. “If you’re right, what can we do?”

  “Perhaps we could work together, combine our findings, and see if we can discover once and for all what happened to separate the Duke of Durbane and the woman he married.”

  “I’m willing to give it a try. If you want, we can get together at my apartment. Much of my research is on my computer there. What about you? You said you recently moved to Atlanta, right?”

  “Right. My company transferred me here from Memphis. I found an apartment but it isn’t very well furnished yet, so meeting at your place suits me.”

  “What do you do, anyway?”

  “I’m a computer programmer. Matter of fact, I’m due back at work in fifteen minutes. Are you free to get started tonight?”

  “Sure. I’ll give you directions to my place. Say, are you going to eat that pie?”

  He pushed it across the table to her, then pulled out his billfold, removed a couple of twenties, and tossed them on the table. “Shall I pick up dinner on my way to your apartment tonight?”

  She set her fork down next to the pie. “That sounds great, but what made you think of bringing food?”

  “Uncle Ben gave me instructions to buy your lunch if he didn’t show up. He said you’re always hungry, so I figured maybe you were a little short on cash.”

  “Thanks for the thought, but Ben misled you. I’m always starved at lunch because I rarely eat breakfast, not because I’m too poor to buy food.”

  “I’m beginning to think Ben misled me about quite a few things.”

  “Anything specific?”

  “Well, he certainly didn’t tell me that his researcher was a gorgeous blonde who also happens to be among the top one per cent in the nation where IQ is concerned. And believe me, I find high IQs extremely sexy.” He gave her a slow smile that had her insides going into orbit.

  Amelia gulped, then grinned. “Okay, nice line, but I have to ask—where do you come up with that top one per cent figure?”

  He grinned back. “Like they say, ‘i
t takes one to know one’.” He glanced at his cell phone. “Unfortunately, it’s getting late and I really have to go.” He pulled a pen from his pocket and scribbled something on a paper napkin. “Here’s my number. Text me your address and I’ll find you. Is seven o’clock okay?”

  “Great.” She picked her fork up. “Call if you have any problems finding my place. You’ll have my number after I text you.”

  “Will do.” He gathered up his newspaper then stood. “Enjoy my pie.”

  “No worries there.” She smiled broadly and cut into the syrupy filling. “Bye.”

  She took a bite then twisted around in the booth to watch him walk out of the diner. The sight of his butt being hugged by tight black jeans was almost as sweet as her pie, and she sighed with appreciation as she watched him stride toward the exit.

  The unexpected flash of heat that streaked through her seemed strangely familiar, almost as though she’d admired that particular bum—and the man it was attached to—on some occasion in the far past.

  But that was impossible.

  “Get a grip, girl,” she muttered aloud when Jack disappeared through the doorway. She shook her head and turned around to devote her attention to her pie. But even as she chewed on the gooey pecans, her mind persisted in searching for memories that simply could not exist.

  Chapter Five

  Ben never showed up at the diner, so Amelia wouldn’t have been able to return the diary to him anyway, which was just as well, because she’d decided to keep working with it. Jack’s unexpected appearance had spurred her interest in solving the mystery surrounding the Duke of Durbane and the woman he’d married.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon transcribing more mind-numbing entries.

  Tea was late today. I had to speak rather sharply to the housekeeper, who of course blamed the delay on Cook. Servants are such a trial.