A Basket of Wishes

by Rebecca Paisley

  Jourdian nodded, but didn’t elaborate. There was more to the story than Splendor had guessed. There was also the fact that his father’s love for Isabel had turned Barrington into an absentminded fool.

  “Oh, Jourdian,” Splendor said, wafting close enough to him so that she could cup his cheek in her hand. “Now I begin to understand why the mention of love makes you ache.”

  He wondered if she really could understand. Did her fairy emotions allow her to comprehend that love was not pure happiness? That it had a dark side as well? Could she grasp the fact that love could blind a man to all else and destroy him?

  “Jourdian?” Splendor said, feeling a strange wave of emotion in her heart. “I yearn to soothe you, but—”

  “It isn’t your responsibility to soothe—”

  “Aye, ’tis my responsibility, Jourdian,” she whimpered, diamonds flowing from her eyes again. “I swore to make you happy, and I—”

  “You have, Splendor. You have.”

  She saw starlit honesty in his eyes. “But how? What have I done?”

  The desperation in her voice gripped him. He reached for her, pulling her out of the air and into his lap. “You make me laugh. When one laughs, doesn’t that mean one is happy?”

  She brushed diamonds off her face and nodded.

  “You’re very beautiful,” Jourdian added. “That makes me happy. And at night, you’re ecstasy incarnate in my arms. What man wouldn’t be happy with that?”

  He wanted to tell her more, but knew not what else to say. Still, there was something more. Something deeper, something even more special than her amusing character, her beauty, and her passionate lovemaking.

  Whatever that special something was, it floated through his emotions just as he now floated high in the night sky.

  Before he realized his own intentions or actions, he was kissing her.

  Wildness erupted inside her when his tongue flicked across the center of her lips then teased the corners of her mouth.

  Gently, he urged her onto her back, pulling her closer and closer until her body was molded to his. Enveloped by the cloud and his masculinity, Splendor curled her arms around him, her palms sliding over and pressing into the sleek coils of muscle in his back.

  She felt his hand slide beneath her gown.

  And then it stilled. “You wear nothing but a thin chemise beneath this dress,” Jourdian said, his smoldering gaze burning into hers.

  “Aye, that is what I have on beneath this dress. I know what you are going to say, but—”

  “So you read my thoughts now, do you?”

  “Aye, and I know that you are going to scold me for not wearing the undergarments. But I do not like them. They are too much to wear, husband, and make me feel too heavy.”

  He didn’t question her further. Her lack of underwear made his sensual task all the easier.

  “The stars are watching us, Jourdian,” Splendor whispered, watching the stars peeping down from the sky.

  “Let’s give them something to really watch, shall we?” he suggested, his lips still clinging to hers.

  Again, she felt his hand move over her legs, sweeping over her inner calves, nudging her thighs apart, and beckoning forth all the passion she held within her writhing frame. His skilled fingers sought and found the heart of her femininity, but not long did they remain there. She moaned in protest when he withdrew his hand and ended his kiss.

  “Will we stop so soon, Jourdian?” she demanded.

  He saw her eyes glittering with the fury of desire. The sight made him laugh a deep, husky laugh. “Stop, Splendor? Deny myself my first opportunity to make love on a cloud bed in the middle of a midnight sky? Surely you jest.”

  She saw him work at the fastening of his pants, then watched his beautiful maleness spring free from within its confines. Joyfully, she opened her arms to receive him.

  Jourdian knelt between her slim ankles and leaned forward to taste and lick at her belly with the tip of his tongue as if she were a succulent sweet. He sampled her navel, each of her hip bones, and then nuzzled his lips into the auburn silk at the apex of her thighs.

  When his mouth dipped even lower, Splendor closed her legs and captured his head between them. “Sweet everlasting, Jourdian, will you taste me there?”

  He lifted his gaze to hers. “Is that a mere question, or a passionate plea?”

  “Both,” she said, her voice as soft and hot as the rustle of a flame.

  “Then the answer is yes to your question and to your plea.”

  Blood flooded his loins when she opened her legs wide to receive him in the incredibly intimate fashion with which he planned to take her. He’d thought to begin gently, softly, but his first taste of her drove his lust straight through the wall of restraint.

  His tongue slid inside her, then almost withdrew completely before he thrust it upward again. Listening to her gasps of surprised pleasure, he moved his upper lip over the hidden bud of her desire, and smiled inwardly when her quiet moans of bliss were overwhelmed by the powerful music of her joy.

  He loved her thus for many long moments, his tongue delving, withdrawing, plunging into her over and over again until at last he could ignore his own desire no longer.

  Rising, he tunneled his hands beneath her bottom, lifted her hips off the cloud, and embedded himself inside her with one long, deep stroke. Not a thread of control would come to him, and he ground his hips into hers with wild urgency.

  He heard her music play louder, stroking the starlit heavens with its beautiful melody. Off the cloud he felt Splendor rise, he with her. There was naught but night air beneath them now, and the experience of floating among the lofty celestial bodies was the most incredible Jourdian had ever known.

  “Jourdian,” Splendor cried softly.

  He felt her inner muscles tense around him, squeezing from him his own powerful climax. Higher she took him, higher into a world of dazzling sensation.

  And together they found ecstasy in a heaven full of stars.

  “Dear God, Splendor,” Jourdian panted. He raised his upper torso and saw that the entire sky was ablaze with dancing lights. Earth was but a round and distant sphere, and the moon rose up before him, a tremendous white orb, intimidating and awesome at once.

  He wondered if he could reach out and lay his palm upon its cratered surface.

  He decided to try.

  He held out his arm. His body tensed, his fingers straining, stretching.

  And he touched it. The glorious moon.

  He, a mere human had caressed the moon.

  A feeling of wonder enveloped him, a sense of magic, and he realized suddenly that all the many marvelous things he might have missed as a child were nothing, nothing at all, measured up to making love in the nighttime sky and feeling the moon beneath his palm.

  And it had all happened because of Splendor.

  “Jourdian?” Her mind and body filled to the brim with him, Splendor embraced him as tightly as her strength would allow. “I wish that I could love you,” she whispered into the moist hollow of his shoulder. “I know that if I could, I would love you as you have never been loved before.”

  Her wish was Jourdian’s own.

  And the moment he realized that poignant truth, one solitary star set apart from all the rest, embraced his wish and grew so bright that all the other stars in the sky paled in comparison.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What?” Harmony shouted, standing within the crackling blazes in the fireplace of the yellow chambers. “What do you mean you are going to learn to love him?”

  Splendor ignored her sister’s astonishment, and continued to calmly stroke Delicious’s cold, scaly back.

  The green lizard blinked its black eyes closed, gave a reptilian sigh of pleasure, then turned himself into a baby elephant. He lumbered toward a small table across the room upon which sat a porcelain basin. Dipping his thick, gray trunk into the bowl, he sucked up water, then commenced to spray it over his body, the carpet, and the wall.r />
  Shaking her head over her pet’s antics, Splendor returned her attention to Harmony. “I mean exactly that, sister. I am going to discover the secret to loving, and I am going to love Jourdian. ’Tis an emotion I long to feel and understand.”

  “But why do you want to know what love is? We’ve nay a need for it in Pillywiggin.”

  Splendor pondered her husband. “This is not Pillywiggin. ’Tis Heathcourte, and while I am here I must concern myself with human things. Love is a human thing, hence Jourdian needs to have it.”

  “Who cares what that man needs! Splendor, you are here to conceive his child, not give him some heartfelt emotion unknown to Faerie.”

  Splendor wasn’t certain she knew how to make Harmony understand something she barely understood herself. “I am still trying to conceive the child, sister. I have nay forgotten my duty to Pillywiggin. But I care about Jourdian. If I can make him happy, ’tis what I will do.”

  “But you cannot love no matter how hard you try.” Splendor meandered to the window and watched a trio of sparrows frolic over the terrace. “Love is mighty, Harmony. You heard Father say so. If ’tis truly the most powerful force in creation, then it can surely work its magic on me.”

  “That is nonsense.” In a puff of black smoke, Harmony emerged from the fire flames and assumed human form. “Father’s fury will know no bounds when he learns what you are planning. He—”

  “How will he know?” Splendor asked, turning from the window.

  Harmony shook her head. “Is there so much sickening sentiment in you that you’ve no room for brains? I shall tell him, of course!”

  Splendor had already pondered that possibility. “And if you do, I shall tell him that you have been cavorting with a human of your own. You know full well that the only reason Father sent me to Jourdian was to conceive a child. You have not been sent to any human, Harmony, and yet you—”

  “I have been with Emil but thrice!”

  “Thrice? Besides Jourdian’s courtyard, where else have you been with Emil?”

  Harmony’s gaze darted around the room while she tried to decide whether to be honest, or not.

  “I can always ask Emil,” Splendor warned.

  “He came to visit the Trinity two days ago,” Harmony admitted, “but he preferred to be with me. I saw him get out of his carriage. When I called to him he followed me into the woods. And he followed me of his own will, Splendor. I did not use magic to beckon him.”

  “I see. And what did you do in the woods with him?”

  “That kissing,” Harmony confessed, caressing her lips with two fingers and remembering how soft Emil’s mouth had felt upon hers. “And we did it again this morning. ’Twas near the stone wall that edges the Trinity’s land.”

  “You just happened to spot Emil there, too.”

  Harmony shook her head. “Yesterday in the woods, I told him to go there and wait for me.”

  Splendor left the window and crossed to where her sister stood. “Why are you fond of being in his company?”

  “He listens to me when I speak of the fact that you get everything and I get nothing. He understands.”

  Splendor nodded a slow nod. “You hate humans. But there is nay a hint of hatred in your voice when you remember Emil.”

  “I do hate him,” Harmony flared, tiny yellow blazes leaping into her blue eyes. “But I need his kissing to feel strong, and I like to complain to someone who gives me his ear. When I grumble in Pillywiggin, no one hears a word I say. But even so, I do not like Emil. I hate him with all the passion in the universe. I am only using him for what he can give me and do for me.”

  Harmony was lying, Splendor knew. “Do you think he loves you?”

  The question took Harmony off guard. “What is love?” she queried without thinking. “How does one recognize it?”

  Splendor gave a deep, long sigh and floated to the bed. There she brushed her fingertips across the satin coverlet. “I do not know the answers to those questions.”

  “Then how will you love the Trinity?”

  “When I discover the way, I shall tell you. Then you can practice on Emil.”

  Harmony pondered her last meeting with Jourdian’s cousin. “Do you know what Emil did this morning? I were nay paying attention to my own actions, and I wandered too near to his horse. Emil threw himself at me, tossed me away, and so startled his mount that the steed kicked him in the belly. He lay on the ground, quite out of breath, and I thought for a moment that he had died. When I saw he was alive, I was furious that he had pitched me away as though I were naught but a bit of rubbish. But when he showed me his saddle and I saw all the iron on it, I understood why he had cast me away.”

  Splendor thought Emil’s rescue of Harmony a beautiful story. “And the horse kicked him. Emil suffered pain for you, Harmony. I think he must love you.”

  Harmony began to smile, but caught herself in time. What was the matter with her? she wondered angrily. If she didn’t take care, she would soon become as simpering as her ninny sister! “I hope Emil loves me. Aye, I hope he does. And I shall spurn his love! Throw it back in his face like a stone that will bruise and make him bleed! And I am going to tell Father that you are—”

  “Three times you have been with Emil,” Splendor said, suppressing a smile. “Father will see that as three times too many.” She paused to allow her words to sink into Harmony’s devious mind. “Are we in agreement then, sister? We shall keep each other’s secrets?”

  Harmony’s long golden hair became yellow tongues of fire, flickering down her body and sending sparks all over the carpet. “If you were not a fairy, I would lock you within the frigid depths of the moon and never let you out.”

  “But I am your sister, and so you will not imprison me in moon ice. What I feel certain you will do is keep my secret, just as I shall keep yours.”

  “You cannot love the Trinity, Splendor. ’Tis impossible. He is unlovable. He is a mean person.”

  Splendor smiled. “You are a mean fairy. It seems to me that the two of you should get along supremely well.”

  “You offend me, sister. Compared to me, he is no more dangerous than a drop of dew!” Harmony shrank into Pillywiggin size, not because she had to, but because she wished to recline upon a powder puff that lay on the dressing table.

  A bit of powder yet clung to the puff, making her sneeze four times. Wiping her nose with the back of her tiny hand, she looked up at Splendor. “Why do you seek to fulfill that ghastly man’s need for a lover?”

  Splendor took a seat on the velvet stool in front of the vanity. She took a pinch of powder between her fingertips and trickled the fragrant dust over Harmony’s tiny frame. “Because I believe my love would be like medicine to him.”

  “He is sick?” Harmony asked hopefully, then sneezed again. “Cease sprinkling me with that powder, Splendor.”

  Splendor rubbed the powder on her fingers onto the top of her wrist. “His heart is sick.”

  “His heart? Bah! You talk more like a human every time I see you.”

  “Oh, Harmony, do you really think so?”

  “The comment was an insult, sister.”

  But to Splendor it was a compliment. She was beginning to think and speak like a human.

  Surely she could learn to love.

  Splendor didn’t go to Jourdian for her love lessons. She understood enough about him now to know that he would have been little help to her. True, he had shared his thoughts and memories with her the night they'd made love amidst the stars, but she sensed a lingering unwillingness within him, a hesitancy to reveal any more than he already had.

  But during the next few weeks, Splendor discovered that there were plenty of other humans in and around Heathcourte who possessed no such hesitancy to talk about love. Mrs. Frawley, she soon learned, was in love with the subject of love.

  “Love is what keeps our world alive,” she told Splendor one bright morning while supervising the upstairs maids with their tasks.

  “Alive?” S
plendor asked. “Oh, Mrs. Frawley, would you please put that horrible beast out of here?”

  Mrs. Frawley fairly smelled the duchess’s terror, then saw Pharaoh sitting on a velvet chair in the corridor, his sable tail swishing. “Oh, it’s only His Grace’s pet cat. Granted Pharaoh’s a devil at times, but he… My goodness, how did he escape my house? I distinctly remember locking him in the kitchen this morning before I left…”

  “Please,” Splendor whispered, her back to the wall. “Make him go away.”

  Mrs. Frawley shooed the Siamese off the chair, whereupon the cat hissed and disappeared down the hall. “There now. He’s gone. I’ll take him back home with me when I leave this evening.”

  Splendor gave a weak smile. Pharaoh wasn’t going to stay at Mrs. Frawley’s house, she knew. The look in the beast’s eyes told her that he fully planned on returning to the mansion time and time again.

  “Let’s return to the subject, shall we?” Mrs. Frawley asked. “Love is to humans what rain and sunshine are to flowers, my dear,” she explained, forgetting that the “dear” little Splendor possessed one of the most sought-after titles in all the land. “Do you have a lot of love in your life?”

  “Indeed I do. I have loved my Mr. Frawley for forty-six years. I married him when I was sixteen, and with each year that passes our love deepens. He’s a quiet man, Mr. Frawley, but he has no need to speak often. I read his thoughts as well as I read words written on a page.”

  Her yellow silk gown swishing softly, Splendor followed the housekeeper into one of the guest rooms, where two maids were busy dusting and polishing furniture. “But how did you come to love your husband, Mrs. Frawley? Did you have to do something special to feel such adoration for him?”

  Mrs. Frawley feigned a nonchalant demeanor, but in her heart she knew the duchess wanted to love the duke. The thought filled the housekeeper with deep delight. “I didn’t do anything to fall in love with him. It just happened.” She paused a moment to reprimand a young maid who had missed a wealth of dust on the mantel. “I met Mr. Frawley in the village where I was born and was instantly attracted to his good looks. A more beautiful smile you have never seen, and when he gifted me with that smile for the first time, I nearly swooned.”