The Hallucinatory Duke by Meta Mathews Read Free Book Online Page B

to his long, muscular legs were paired with a short-sleeved T-shirt from an Aerosmith concert. There was no way that the duke—with his cutaway coats and embroidered waistcoats and diamond stickpins—had ever looked this sexy.
    Amelia was struck again with that nettlesome sense that she had known—perhaps even loved—Jack at some point in the past. “Déjà vu all over again,” she muttered, thoroughly irritated with herself.
    “Did you say something?” Jack regarded her with a frown.
    Amelia gave herself a mental shake. “Nothing important.” She quickly relieved him of two of the bags and stepped back. “Come in. Sorry to keep you waiting. I’ve been working all afternoon on that Comstock woman’s diary, and I just got an unpleasant shock.”
    She carried the bags to the counter that separated the kitchen from the living area and motioned for Jack to follow. “You didn’t call, so I guess you had no trouble finding my place.”
    “Oh, I called. Several times as a matter of fact. I wasn’t sure whether to get pizza or Chinese and I wanted to ask your preference. My calls kept getting dropped, so I just took a chance on Chinese.”
    “The calls got dropped?” Amelia frowned. “That’s strange. The signal here is usually great. Where were you calling from?”
    “Just about three blocks away.”
    Amelia shivered. “This is a little creepy. I wonder if the duke was interfering with the calls. Maybe he didn’t want you coming here.”
    “You’ve been working at the computer too long.” Jack’s elevated eyebrows suggested he found Amelia’s fears to be rather far-fetched. “Calls are dropped on a regular basis all over the world. Don’t read too much into it.”
    “I suppose that’s true. In any case, you guessed right about the food because I love Chinese.” She pulled a couple of cartons out of the bags. “I’ll warm these. Make yourself comfortable. You can set your laptop up next to mine on the desk over there if you want.”
    “No rush.” He set his case down beside the sofa. “What’s this unpleasant shock you said you experienced?”
    “Before we get into that, perhaps we should eat and then compare notes. I didn’t know you existed until today. Why hasn’t Ben mentioned you?”
    “You’d have to ask him. He told me about you, but he only referred to you as ‘his researcher’. I thought you were a man, until he asked me to meet with you and then told me your name.”
    Amelia took the sesame chicken out of the microwave and stuck the pepper steak in. “So how long have you been researching for Ben?” she asked.
    “Not long. He kept trying to get me involved in this duke business, but I kept blowing him off. It simply didn’t interest me. But now…” His voice trailed off.
    “Now what?”
    He shrugged. “Now I’m curious as to why I’m having these strange encounters with a woman from the past who looks somewhat like you. Except for the hair, of course, and I assume you’re not a natural blonde.”
    Amelia decided to ignore that pointed remark. “The food’s hot. I’ve got tea, diet colas and beer. Do you have a preference?”
    “Beer’s good.”
    They settled down at the table and ate in silence for a few minutes. Jack was the first to speak. “Are you familiar with the Hardwicke Marriage Act of 1754?”
    “Of course I’m familiar with the Hardwicke Act. I majored in European history after all.”
    “Well, I didn’t, so how about explaining it to me. It’s something Uncle Ben keeps harping on about.”
    Amy took a sip of her diet cola, then cleared her throat. “The Hardwicke Act was intended to end irregular or clandestine marriages, which was a custom that had led to a lawsuit that had to be settled in the House of Lords. But, like most laws, while this one solved some problems, it created others. One of its most troublesome paragraphs stated that a marriage was null and void if one of the couple was a minor, marrying by licence without proper permission