Divine Night

by Melanie Jackson

  But now that she thought about it, there had also been a growing strangeness in the air as they talked on into the dark, an erection of mental barriers that he retreated behind as the hours eased into one another, and then he’d withdrawn. Especially when she had turned to him at the foot of the stairs as they said their good nights and almost kissed him. He hadn’t recoiled from her touch, but he hadn’t offered any encouragement either. His expression had been oddly bleak as he gazed unblinking into her eyes.

  He didn’t want to love again. The pain for him had been crippling. She knew this and understood it. Hell, Harmony thought with irritation, she wasn’t looking for long-term love either. Just…comfort and a chance to taste of the strongest attraction she’d ever known. But for some reason, a sober Alex wasn’t willing to give her this, was afraid of what might happen between them if they indulged even this much—though he admitted to having casual sex all the time, so it should have been an easy matter to have accepted a short-term relationship with her, even if his heart was still wrapped up with the memory of a dead woman.

  It wasn’t easy, though, not for either of them—probably because of their mental connection that prevented things from remaining casual and impersonal. And although she couldn’t say precisely from what direction emotional danger would come, she had to admit that, standing in the dark of Alex’s favorite room, she now felt some of his fear of closeness. He liked her—maybe wanted her. But they were different. Very different. Maybe too different. And intuition should be respected. After all, he had been alive a long time. And though he genuinely cared for her and she for him, there was clearly something inside that told him to keep her at a distance. If anything, he was probably more wary now than he had been before she opened up to him over dinner. And however nonspecific her own inner voice was, she believed her instincts when they spoke to her of peril. As sure as the sun would show up in the east come morning, she knew there would be trouble if she allowed herself to get any closer to this man.

  That was hard to accept when she could still feel his hands on her and sense his arousal. Some people were not meant to love—hadn’t she said this herself? She had to respect this knowledge and honor Alex’s own desires and intuition.

  It would be difficult. Under other circumstances, she would leave this place. But they had to deal with Saint Germain, so she was going to stick around for a bit. The heart might want, but the mind could—would—prevail over the body. It had to.

  Harmony inhaled slowly. Her breath was unsteady and irregular. Even now, the memory of how close she had come to giving herself to Alex in Mexico frightened her a bit. That was as close to insanity as she ever wanted to come.

  Even if she had felt wildly happy for the first time in years? an inner voice asked wistfully.

  She exhaled ruthlessly, emptying her lungs as she tried to empty the thoughts from her restless brain.

  Enough. The decision was made. It was true that Harmony rarely felt entirely happy. But she had a very busy, very full life. So what if she was sometimes lonely? Everyone was. It was okay to want Alex. That meant she was still alive. But it was also okay to be cautious, especially tonight. He was high—as strung out as any junkie and maybe thinking about some other woman; she needed to be responsible for both of them.

  Harmony looked out at Alex, so still that he seemed made of stone, so beautiful that he took her breath, and so distant that he didn’t seem human. She almost cried. Instead she curled her nails into her palms and squeezed hard enough to leave marks.

  She wanted him—wanted him! And on another occasion, she might be tempted to give in. But she would not take advantage of him because he was stoned and feeling promiscuous because of the storm. That would be…well, rape. Especially if he was in love with another woman.

  “Forget it,” Harmony said softly, feeling a bit ill as she forced herself away. She let her hands relax. “There’s nothing for you here. Do what you have to do to finish things with Saint Germain and then move along.”

  Harmony touched a sore hand to her head. She frowned when she felt fever on the skin. Maybe it wasn’t all Alex disturbing her. She could be sick and probably imagining things. At the very least, she was dog-tired, and her judgment was impaired by the lack of sleep. The throbbing in her body was not desire, it was rhinovirus. What she needed was rest, the kind to be had in the solitude of her room.

  Sighing, half with self-disgust and half with disappointment, Harmony retreated upstairs. She didn’t see Alex when he rolled off the balustrade and dove headlong into the heaving water.

  Harmony was on the other side of the glass, not six feet away, but she didn’t open the door to join him. In a moment of weakness, he’d called to her in her sleep. And she’d come downstairs, but she had stopped short of actually joining him.

  Something had stopped her, and it was probably just as well. Though she appealed to him as no woman had since Thomasina, he knew that what he wanted tonight was stupid, risky, and unfair to her, even though she had been warned that his…good intentions? no, rather his expectations of their happiness in a sexual union were almost nonexistent. He knew that words of warning were nothing when she could feel the same things that he did coursing through the body, singing in the blood. He was high—drunk on storm and desire—and so was she.

  And, as he had learned in Mexico, a stormy night was not a good time to be giving in to wild impulses. It had been on just such a night that Thomasina was killed.

  He wanted her—and that was understandable. Naturally, her open admiration of him was alluring. Anyone would find it difficult to resist a woman who spoke with such fervor for her work and writing, someone whose devotion to a cause was as great as his own had been when he had been young and hopeful. Hell, she was his youth made flesh again, a hearth fire of optimism in the endless winter that had become his soul. And she wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her. Surely she did! This couldn’t be all his will manifesting itself—influencing her—could it?

  But he couldn’t know for certain. And something had prevented her from opening the door and coming to him. They needed to practice caution for this very reason. She wasn’t the first amazing woman who had called to him—and he wasn’t so high he had forgotten that every such affair he had indulged in ended in tragedy. Even when he entered into a relationship with the purest of intentions, they still ended badly: in heartbreak and revulsion and even death, if they went as far wrong as they had with Thomasina. And sometimes in cruel apathy and coldness, even when his old enemy was not involved. How many times did he have to be shown that love gone wrong could lead to an inexhaustible supply of ill will? His remembrances of the women in his life were a burial ground of lost loves where he still mourned deeply on the rare occasion that he allowed himself to visit. He didn’t want Harmony buried there. She was too important to him.

  He felt her turn away from him, hurry away from the doors. The distance growing between them was as much emotional as physical. He knew when she looked back a last time, taking great care that sudden unwanted tears did not overspill her lower lids. He heard her thoughts clearly: there had been great things to cry over the last few days. Why did her emotions betray her now? He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her emotions, her tears that troubled her. It was his misgivings, his emotional scars that hurt her now. He had been trying to write about Thomasina but hadn’t been able to create the happy fiction his story required.

  Her heart said things to him that her voice could not. It also heard answers from him not meant for her ears. And she thought: What a pair we are. Stray cats—hungry for company but too wary to accept a meal. We’d rather starve than risk getting hurt.

  Alex thought about his final conversation with Harmony as they parted for bed, and growled with frustration. He was supposed to be a master of words, but had failed to adequately explain himself. He wasn’t still in love with a dead woman. That wasn’t what held him back.

  “Emotions—love especially—are luxuries we eventually have to pay fo
r,” he had warned her, turning his face so their lips wouldn’t meet. “It isn’t just desire for me. If only I could trade in the coin of that simple realm, but the price—for me—has always been something higher. I didn’t mind risking my life for love, but I never counted on having the ones I love die because of me.”

  “I see.” Harmony had looked up at him with eyes that reminded him of what God intended when He had invented spring. “I even understand. I’m just not sure that I agree,” she had added with a small smile. “There are exceptions to every rule, you know. And I am not Thomasina. I know the enemy, and I don’t plan on dying.”

  That would be great dialogue in a play or novel. And, no, she wasn’t Thomasina. She was stronger, better informed of the danger, more capable of fighting. But leaving Saint Germain aside, he knew he shouldn’t risk making an exception to his sensible policy, no matter how much he longed to. Mexico had been a warning. For them, it wasn’t likely that there could be sex with no strings. It turned them into some sort of mental Siamese twins where neither was alert to danger. He couldn’t have her and also protect her. Selfinterest was…selfish.

  But what was he going to do with Harmony? Sending her away wasn’t a good option. Not until he found Byron or Ninon and could arrange protection for her. He couldn’t forget that Saint Germain had been after her and might want her more than ever now that he knew she had been with his old enemy. She was in Cornwall because it was the safest place for her. Also because Alex was impetuous, and bringing her here—where they were together without interruption—had seemed like a good idea when he thought he could resist the attraction between them. But impulse, combined with a growing personal relationship, was not working well for him. In fact, it never worked well for him. How could he have forgotten this? It wasn’t as if he didn’t have an encyclopedic history of failures to consult.

  The first woman he had disappointed was his mother. Alex had spent much of his youth running away from schooling and jobs pointing him at careers he didn’t like. He’d been wise enough to know he was not made for the church, law, or the tax office. He had also—to his later shame—run away from Laure and the illegitimate child she bore him. He’d paid for the child’s upkeep and visited from time to time, but he would not marry the older seamstress who loved him, or submit to the ties of fatherhood. At twenty-two, he’d had larger plans, and they did not include his bastard son, Alexandre. Paris called him in a voice far more seductive.

  Then circumstances had changed. As predicted, Alex had achieved some fame in Paris and a bit of fortune. At his aging mother’s words of longing for a grandchild he had impulsively intervened in Alexandre’s life, presenting him as a gift, rather like one might offer a puppy to a child. But this gesture had backfired. His mother had been appalled to learn that he had a bastard, and was also too sick to look after young Alexandre.

  Alex looked back at this now and shuddered. How could anyone have been so cavalier with a child’s life? He had been an absent father—almost always a disaster even if the child had another full-time parent—and the results of taking Alexandre from his mother were predictably and proportionally disastrous. Laure had envenomed the child against him before Alexandre even arrived. For this Alex did not entirely blame her. He hadn’t done the honorable thing and married his son’s mother to begin with, because he had not been ready to give up his dreams of being a great writer and settling for a job in a law office. And there had been another woman. Several, in fact. This action was selfish enough, but to have compounded it by taking the boy from his mother when he reached school age only to leave him to be raised by a string of mistresses—some of whom had loved the boy but some who had not—was unforgivable. He deserved every curse Laure piled on his head.

  Nor had he done any better by his eldest daughter, though at least he had eventually married her actress mother, which had pleased the sensitive girl. But the union, entered into impulsively, had been so unhappy, and he was so often away from home, that he couldn’t really claim to have done any real parenting with this child either. In both cases, he had left behind bitter women, and even more bitter children. The inevitable divorce that had taken decades had gone down in the annals of French history as one of the nastiest on record. Melanie had bankrupted him, but he had taken Marie from her in retaliation. Too late had they understood that it was a Pyrrhic victory. The trade had left neither one happy and had ruined Marie, their daughter.

  Alex sighed. A careful coachman never tangled the reins of personal and professional life because anything left dragging was bound to catch on life’s frequent bad circumstances—like his wife, Melanie. Harmony didn’t understand this, though. She was too young to see that small emotional setbacks were annoying, but the larger ones, like a bad marriage, could topple lives. And the end result of these particular errors was that his son and daughter had felt second-best and were never, not even for a moment, capable of being radiantly happy. Marie had in fact ended up being more than a little eccentric later in life. After her separation from an insane husband, she had started going about dressed as a druid, wearing a wreath of mistletoe on her head and carrying a sickle attached to her girdle, which she brandished at people when they came too close. There had been no choice but to send her to the country in the care of a warden. Some eccentricity was beyond what Paris would tolerate.

  And then there was Thomasina…

  He knew the truth. He was a great writer but a lousy human. He’d been making mistakes with women since before President Lincoln grew a beard. His track record at liaisons—at least with people he truly loved—was abysmal. Harmony would be better off if she never became emotionally involved with him. People who loved Alex died young, bitter and alone. The idea that he would love successfully was ludicrous, maybe even mirth-provoking to some of the ghosts who haunted his graveyard of failed relationships.

  No, it was best that she had turned away tonight, that she hadn’t ventured out to join him in the wild feelings the storm called forth. It was far better that she know him no better than she did. Sex would only chain her—and him—more thoroughly. Thinking they could cure this attraction with casual sex was like trying to treat typhoid with aspirin. And this was a relationship that was likely to continue to be hemorrhagic, absolutely lubricated with gore if she insisted on going after Saint Germain—which she would do if they were any more deeply connected. Once bound to him, she would have no choice. His death would be her own.

  Yes, they were more than a few party hats shy of a good time. Their only hope was to kill Saint Germain and then to part.

  Alex sighed and touched his earring. He wasn’t at all sure what he was doing outside anyway when he had so much writing left to do on this bloody, endless novel. Yes, he always enjoyed the storms—wanted to see them, feel them, hear them—and this kind of storm was particularly invigorating. This enlivening experience was partly why he had bought the island. But it was too cold even for him. And though he was feeling uneasy about being anywhere near Harmony, the trouble was internal and not a matter of proximity that could be cured by a second set of doors between them, or a cold shower. Therefore it didn’t seem sensible that he would actually be looking for solutions out here in the cold.

  But he did feel—what? A vague inkling that something was amiss with the world. The warning rode the distant threnody of the gale, a lonely sound beyond the pitch of human hearing that was coming ever closer.

  I’m here already, Alex, a voice whispered, more in his mind than in his ear, and he felt the familiar ghostly touch graze his cheeks. Danger comes for her. Soon. Beware.

  Thomasina? he asked. Then: Was that you in Mexico?

  I’m always with you, Alex. You carry me inside and wear my memory like a hair shirt.

  Then the touch and voice were gone—probably just a hallucination brought on by his unhappy remembrances of her. Or maybe it was his subconscious trying to warn him of something while he brooded over his ancient mistakes.

  Alex blinked and began paying attention to
the outside world again. He ordered his external senses awake.

  He stiffened. Danger. It was in the air now. And not solely because of his ever-growing attraction to Harmony. But what could it be? They were on an island, surrounded by water, half a world away from Saint Germain’s monsters, so why had he imagined that voice and icy touch warning him to beware?

  Alex inhaled deeply, trying for a scent, and began to scan the horizon. He couldn’t see anything, but every nerve said that danger lurked nearby. He knew in his bones that some threat was just ahead in the fog or around the corner, hiding in the shadows. He had developed a sort of sixth sense that warned him when danger was closing in. It had saved him more times than he cared to recall—from financial disaster, but also from a volcanic eruption, several times from ambush by his enemies, and once from a murder threat by a rival lover of a now-forgotten woman he had taken to bed on a whim. That instinct now said mortal peril was near.

  Harmony had seemed to sense something, too, earlier in the evening. She had spent much of their meal glancing toward the windows, watching the approaching storm, and frowning. Alex chastised himself. He should have paid closer attention! They were both psychic, after all.

  But…there was nothing. There was no unfamiliar smell in the air. The village was peaceful and dark. The sea was empty, as was the sky, except for the growing lightning and wind.

  Alex hoped passionately that the approaching danger had nothing to do with Harmony. When he had brought her to Cornwall he had wanted more time, time to learn more of her secrets, her desires, her dreams, and to warm himself at her bright inner fire that a long life’s many disappointments had not yet dimmed. But he had never meant to put her in harm’s way.