Divine Night

by Melanie Jackson

  Divine Night

  Melanie Jackson

  LOVE SPELL NEW YORK CITY

  IN THE EYE OF THE STORM

  A part of Harmony realized that this stranger—this Alexandre Dumas who carried a gun—was somehow inside her head, perhaps guiding her to this moment, perhaps against her will or at least her better sense. Odder still, she had this feeling that if she shifted her thoughts just a bit that she might be able to see into his mind too. As it was, it seemed like she knew what he would say or do a splitsecond before he said or did anything. This should have alarmed her, but her senses seemed entirely taken up by the weird but overwhelming erotic sensation that was making her skin dance and her muscles go weak.

  Perhaps she was more drunk than she realized. But drunk or not, she didn’t care. She sighed with pleasure and for the first time gave herself over completely to the experience of brain-fogging passion, letting Alex enter her thoughts fully and willing him to share her elation and arousal.

  This was a night that she’d never forget.

  For my dear husband—Thank you for being here

  How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.

  —Alexandre Dumas

  What would you say to an immense novel beginning with Jesus and ending with the last man of creation, divided into five episodes: one under Nero, one under Charlemagne, one under Charles IX, one under Napoleon, and one set in the future?…The principal characters are to be: The Wandering Jew, Jesus Christ, Cleopatra, the Fates, Prometheus, Nero, Poppaea, Narcissus, Octavia, Charlemagne, Rolland, Vittiking, Velleda, Pope Gregory VII, King Charles IX, Catherine de Medicis, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Napoleon, Marie-Louise, Tallyrand, the Messiah, and the Angel of the Cup. I suppose that sounds mad to you, but ask Alexandre (fils), who knows the work from end to end, what he thinks.

  —Letter from Alexandre Dumas to his publisher, Marchant, about a book that was never written

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  In The Eye Of The Storm

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Author Note

  Critics Rave About Melanie Jackson!

  Other books by Melanie Jackson

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  Christmas Eve, 2006

  The man opened his black notebook and began writing by the light of the fire flickering contentedly on the hearth.

  NIGHT TRAIN TO CASABLANCA A Novel By Alexandre Dumas

  Alex smiled as he wrote because he had always loved his work. And because it paid well. Really well—especially his swashbucklers. This was his…what was this book? Six hundred and seventy-something. When he had first retired, his literary brood of novels, plays, travelogues, and memoirs had already numbered over five hundred.

  It had delighted his current editor when Alex had first approached him with a manuscript for an historical thriller and the suggestion that the book be published under the name of his illustrious ancestor, the original Alexandre Dumas. Dear, ignorant Christopher thought it was a brilliant publicity stunt to have an author pretend to be the famous French novelist—especially since the two men were related.

  Alex had allowed his editor to go on being delighted the last decade and more. He saw no need to complicate the beautiful arrangement by informing Christopher that he truly was Alexandre Dumas, and that his “novels” were actually installments of his autobiography—which were told almost without exaggeration. Almost. As a dramatist, he had never been able to resist the temptation to embellish a bit when history failed to supply the necessary touch of color or proper dialogue.

  Of course, Christopher would be even happier if his best-selling author wrote faster, but some things could not be rushed. And though he had tried, Alex had yet to find a way to use a computer without causing catastrophic memory failure every time he powered up. He couldn’t use cell phones either. Two minutes and the battery went dead, drained of all power and unable to be recharged. Nothing electrical had worked around him since his transformation. It was all part of paying the piper for his infernal gift, but it was annoying. He either had to wear rubber gauntlets when he used electronic machines or else had to have his secretary do everything for him—answer phones, send faxes, even use the photocopier.

  Alex shook his head in irritation and then bent back over his notebook. The silence of the library was unbroken except by the scratching of the pen and the gentle snores of the neighbor’s cat, which had attached herself to him three weeks ago. He called her Lady de Winter because she was white and because she had the hardest eyes he’d ever seen, excepting only those staring at him over a dueling pistol one misty dawn a century ago.

  Casablanca. Perhaps he was romanticizing this chapter of his life a bit—but just a bit, and that was only for the sake of telling a better story, not some Miles Gloriosis. Perhaps he was editing himself a bit as well, but there was no need to upset readers by mentioning that he had taken up the career of a jewel thief because he was depressed and he’d become completely indifferent to society’s laws once it engaged itself in a second world war. And because it had sounded like fun.

  And also because back then he had still retained the natural prejudice of a Frenchman against the English, and hadn’t minded stealing from the rich bastards of Britannia. At least he hadn’t minded until the bombing of London started. He’d been in London when the first Luftwaffe bombers had flown up the estuary, following the Thames into the Old City. He wasn’t an Englishman, and had reason to dislike his old enemy, but this sight offended him. London was beautiful and dignified. He’d had no love for the Germans after the First World War, but it was during this war that he had come to truly detest the nation that had invented the Nazis and all their various clones. After that, Frenchmen and Englishmen alike had been united in their anger against the Germans. Alex had even spied on the Germans for a time, helping the British when he could, even though they hunted him as a criminal.

  There was another reason to write his novel as well.

  Alex touched a hand to the earring he always wore. It looked like a thick gold hoop, but closer examination showed that it had been a lady’s ring. The inside was inscribed with the words je t’adore. He told anyone who asked that he wore it for luck, but in reality it was more of a hair shirt. It had belonged to the only woman he had truly loved, a woman who had died for him. She was the real reason he had to tell this story. This was the time that Fate in the form of a woman had intervened in his life and helped him get off the road to ruin. The tragedy of her death had saved him from personal ruination, arrested his slide into depravity. He owed it to her—and himself—to remember this time.

  There was the real possibility of pain in revisiting this time and place even after all these years, but Alex was not a coward. He thought that he was perhaps finally ready to write about what had happened on that fateful visit to Africa. It had been more than six decades—surely he was ready. He would tear the bandage off this lesion and see what his old wound looked like some sixty years on. Then perhaps he could finally put the incident behind him, stop dream
ing of the woman who had died for him so many years ago. Stop feeling as if his own life had ended on the night she died.

  But that came later in the story. Alex began writing, his penmanship as florid as it had been a century ago.

  Prologue Adventure on a Train

  January 4, 1943

  He was traveling on one of the most luxurious trains in the world—all the guidebooks said so. Passengers were, the books insisted, held spellbound by the lavish blue and gold interiors decorated in the art deco style. The train contained no fewer than three dining cars presided over by master chefs, and every traveler’s wants and comfort were seen to by a crew of attentive stewards uniformed almost as sumptuously as the upholstery and drapes where the pampered elite, those politically ambivalent individuals who liked to view the war through the charming lens provided by the bottom of a champagne flute, dined so long and lavishly.

  However, in spite of his political ambivalence and fondness for champagne, there was little evidence of this abundant comfort in his car. The luggage car. The section of the train where he rode had been decorated by someone of more minimalist tastes. Someone who might be thought to have had a mania about plain wood and exposed iron. Really, it had little to offer beyond tidiness, privacy, and cold—but those it had in abundance.

  Of course, he wasn’t paying for this trip. And when one wasn’t charged even as much as was asked for shipping luggage, it could hardly be considered amazing that one was somewhat overlooked at the dinner hour.

  Dinner. He sighed. It wasn’t to be thought of. Not yet.

  The man in the dirty brown burnous and fading walnut-stained skin shifted quietly. He would not be sorry to discard his garment. He had acquired it in Fez from a vendor’s stall along one of the many labyrinthine streets that wove the crumbling medieval city together from fortified wall to fortified wall. At the time, it had seemed a good idea. Being among the somewhat pungent Fassis, he hadn’t noticed right away that the hooded garment smelled quite heavily of goat. Shut up in the luggage car of the train, it was rather more noticeable.

  However, the hood could not be dispensed with. Sweat—not caused by the warmth of his quarters, which were actually quite arctic, but rather from the too brisk jog he had taken just before boarding the train—had caused both his inferior hair dye and the stain on his face to sluice away in a tiny patter of salty brown rain that was not yet apparent to his captor only because his garment was likewise dark and the lighting so dim.

  The man glanced up at his armed traveling companion. Under other circumstances, they might have passed for brothers—or at least cousins. They both had black hair, tanned skin, and piercing dark eyes, though the man suspected his captor’s eyes were brown rather than midnight black like his own. Both men were also tall and what might be called lanky. But there the resemblances ended. His gun-toting escort was clean-shaven and wore a rather natty suit that could only have come from Savile Row. It was freshly pressed and lacked only a boutonniere to place it and its wearer among the haute monde of London. The suit had, most interestingly, replaced an equally well-pressed lieutenant’s uniform, which was now folded neatly inside a small portmanteau. Taken together, the garments made this Englishman a very interesting specimen indeed. However, the captive’s enthusiasm for deepening the acquaintance under the present circumstances was rather less than unlimited.

  The man had always enjoyed fine clothing, and he felt the sartorial difference most keenly, and was growing covetous as well as hungry. That was understandable because he was a thief as well as a chameleon—he was, in fact, The Chameleon, a master jewel thief much sought by Scotland Yard and most recently by the aériennes de la Gendarmerie, though he supposed that the gendarmes were rather more busy worrying about either the Germans or the Comité D’Action Socialiste these days. Given his background, it was to be expected that he would have certain larcenous impulses. However, though a master purloiner, he was also a man who avoided violence—particularly violence against his own person—whenever he could. His favorite weapons were disguise and fraud and the immoral use of thespian talent, and any other tool of wit that would not cause physical trauma to his victims. He delighted in jewels and precious metals, not bloodshed. His odd traveling companion had put his pistol aside while he dressed, but it was still quite close at hand, and The Chameleon was not certain that the modern-day Beau Brummel had completely bought his impersonation of a peasant of unusual bovine stupidity. It seemed wisest to continue to huddle on the floor and answer in monosyllabic grunts whenever he couldn’t avoid making a reply altogether.

  After all, this wasn’t a civilized corner of the world, and handsome was as handsome did—not how one dressed. The local authorities still believed in chopping off the hands of thieves. And he didn’t have enough hands—or other limbs—to go around. If his identity became known in the wrong quarter, the most he could hope for was to be killed on sight. Or to be turned over to the British authorities, though that didn’t seem a particularly attractive option either. The Chameleon figured that he was already due for the doghouse, or jailhouse, for the rest of his life—plus six years for that little stunt with the mayor’s wife in Shrewsbury—if he didn’t receive a universal dispensation. Unfortunately, these were harder to come by than a well-paying career in crime.

  Though he didn’t speak, The Chameleon listened carefully to the crisp, incisive voice, and he had learned some interesting facts from his companion, who seemed to like the sound of his own words better than the clatter of the iron wheels, as he’d kept up a rather steady monologue as he changed clothes.

  Churchill and the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, were headed for Casablanca for some sort of war meeting. Security in the part of Morocco under Vichy France was being tightened. Actually, it was tighter everywhere, what with either the Germans or the Allies suspecting everyone around them of being spies and traitors.

  Clearly, it would behoove The Chameleon to leave the train as soon as possible and to find some other means of travel. Tangier was suddenly very appealing. It was a busy port of entry and egress, and from there he could easily escape to Spain or Gibraltar. It would be especially easy from the Spanish coastal towns of Ceuta and Molilla.

  “But do you know the oddest part of this business?” the Englishman asked suddenly. He braced himself against the sway of the train as it rounded a bend and leaned over the packing case to have a better look at his dirty captive. The ride was not a violent one, but the pace was clearly less dilatory than usual. He spoke softly, and The Chameleon had to strain to hear him. “I do believe that I have been followed—and for the life of me, I can’t say by whom or for what intention, since it is my first visit here. And my case has been resolved and all the guilty parties are in jail. Still, I sense a hostile presence, a pervasive evil. It is why it is necessary for me to alter my appearance and travel in such an unorthodox manner.” He drew in a breath. “Now, I don’t suppose that you would care to be a good chap and help a fellow Englishman out of a sticky situation? In turn, I may be able to help you.”

  Surprised, shocked even, The Chameleon looked up from his huddle on the floor, and stunned black eyes met knowing brown ones. In that instant, two things happened: The train straightened and returned to a smoother pace, and an arm in a red and white burnous appeared around the edge of a crate at the end of the car that opened to the passenger compartments. It held a gun—a Walther P-38—which was pointed at the Englishman.

  The Chameleon opened his mouth to cry out a warning, but it was too late. Though the Englishman was warned by his expression and spun about quickly with his own pistol in hand, the other gun barked twice, bullets hitting him in the chest before he got off a single shot. The Englishman fell backward over the packing case. The arm disappeared immediately. The killer was apparently unaware—or uncaring—that there had been a witness to his crime.

  For a long moment, The Chameleon did nothing and thought nothing. Normally, he was quite agile and able to think on his feet, but the twin sho
cks of encountering a stranger who apparently knew him—or at least knew what he wasn’t—and then seeing the man murdered had given him pause. He counted to ten and listened and then counted to ten again. But no one returned.

  The Chameleon finally rose to his feet. The first thing he did was retrieve the Englishman’s pistol. It, too, was a 9mm. He next examined the Englishman’s body, though he was quite certain that the man was dead; two bullets delivered directly to the heart would almost always do the trick.

  “Bloody waste of a good shirt,” The Chameleon said, concentrating on that and not on the Englishman’s open eyes.

  Turning from the body, The Chameleon inspected instead the small valise that the Englishman owned. The contents were fascinating. There was a Dutch edition of a French cartoon called “Tintin in America.” The Chameleon smiled at this. He was also a fan of the Belgian, Hergé.

  There was a letter from a Colonel D’Aubert requesting the services of the great and reclusive detective, Remus Maxwell, for a private difficulty in Marrakesh. The financial rewards, the letter promised, would be princely.

  “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” The Chameleon had most recently posed as a French chauffeur, and he was still thinking and swearing in French. He glanced once at the man who, though almost unknown to the public, was a mythic figure in the world of crime. He was also the man who had finally figured out The Chameleon’s modus operandi and reported it to Scotland Yard.

  Galvanized, The Chameleon swiftly returned to his search. There wasn’t a lot. More letters requesting the detective’s services, a collection of currencies—lire, francs mainly—a silver flask of brandy whose contents had been lowered to below half. Brandy…The Chameleon sighed. He preferred whiskey, a single-malt when he could get it. Still, France’s finest would help to keep the worsening cold out of his bones.