A Basket of Wishes

by Rebecca Paisley

  Jourdian detected a bitter note in Ulmstead’s voice and understood that his loyal butler was angry at him for ignoring Splendor. “Send Lord Brackett in, and tell Lady Amberville that I will join her for a late dinner as soon as my meeting is over,” he snapped.

  “At once, your lordship.”

  A few moments later, Percival walked into the office, his black turban wrapped firmly around his bald head. “Heathcourte, I am prepared to sell you the orchards, and I should like to complete the sale this very night.”

  “I see.” Splendor had been right, Jourdian mused. Just as she’d said, Percival was in a great hurry to sell the fruit fields. Why, Jourdian didn’t know, but he was prepared to trust his wife’s advice to buy them cheaply. “Let’s begin then, shall we, Bramwell?”

  Intent on getting as much money as possible for the orchards, Percival argued over the price for what seemed like several eternities to Jourdian.

  Jourdian stood firm, however, and Percival finally accepted less than a fourth of what he’d paid for the fruit fields. He signed all the necessary papers swiftly. “My mistake has just become yours, Heathcourte.” He folded his copy of the sale and slipped it into his pocket. “The orchards are worthless.”

  Jourdian was stunned. “What do you mean they’re worthless?”

  Percival smiled. “Grasshoppers, I’m afraid. A plague of them. Hardy little devils, I must say. They’re not at all bothered by the cold. This morning I received word of their arrival, which is why I hurried to complete this bit of business with you.”

  Jourdian couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that Splendor had led him to make a mistake. She’d told him to buy the orchards, and he had.

  The fields weren’t worthless. Somehow they would not only survive the ravaging grasshoppers but they would thrive. “The orchards aren’t worthless,” he said confidently. “You just sold me a fortune for a pittance.”

  “What?”

  Another glance at the clock told Jourdian it was almost eleven o’clock. He hadn’t seen Splendor all day.

  And he missed her.

  He crossed to the door. “See yourself out, Bramwell.”

  Jourdian cursed himself for not heeding his earlier sense of concern regarding Splendor’s whereabouts. After leaving Percival in the office, he’d begun looking for his duchess, to no avail. And his staff had not a clue as to where she’d gone.

  Deep foreboding coursed through him. The hour was eleven-thirty. It wasn’t like Splendor to be gone so late. His feeling of dread rising, he left the house. Perhaps if he rode around the estate, he would find her rambling about in the snow. Or, since she was a fairy, maybe he’d find her talking to Old Man Winter.

  He started for the barns, but before he reached them, a horse galloped up the driveway. “Jourdian!”

  Jourdian watched his cousin leap off the horse and race toward him. “Emil, what—”

  “Splendor,” Emil panted. “She— she—”

  “What? What about her?” Jourdian shouted, his dread deepening to real fear.

  “Three months,” Emil said, his shoulders heaving with exertion. “After that, they die. Love— She didn’t get love, and now she—”

  “What the bloody hell are you talking about, Emil?” Jourdian demanded. He grabbed his cousin’s shoulders and shook him.

  “Time,” Emil said, trying desperately to catch his breath. “What time is it? Midnight. She leaves at midnight, Jourdian! Is it midnight?”

  “Almost! But what in God’s name—”

  “Fairies!” Emil snatched Jourdian’s hands off his shoulders. “Harmony told me the story before she left for Pillywiggin a short while ago— Splendor’s going back— The fairies are all assembled to welcome her… Fairies can’t survive… Splendor’s time has come to an end! Damn you for a cad, Jourdian! If you had given her your love, she would have been able to stay here with you forever!”

  Wild with rage, Emil drew back his fist and delivered a powerful blow to Jourdian’s chin.

  Unprepared for the assault, Jourdian fell to the snow-covered ground. Pain and deeper confusion exploded through him.

  “She loved you, Jourdian!” Emil blasted out. “And she begged you to love her back! Harmony told me everything!”

  Jourdian struggled to his feet and wiped at the bloody cut at the corner of his mouth. Yanking out his watch, he saw that it was eleven-forty. He still didn’t understand Emil’s twisted, tangled story about love, Splendor, and her midnight return to Pillywiggin, but he did know that he had only twenty minutes to find her.

  He bolted toward Emil’s horse, pulled himself into the saddle, and sent the tired steed back down the driveway.

  The woods, he thought. The woods near the meadow where he’d met her. Hadn’t Splendor once told him that her father’s kingdom lay beneath the floor of that forest?

  Yes.

  Jourdian sent his mount into a thundering gallop toward the thicket. Snow and sharp pieces of ice bit into his face and neck, but he ignored the sting, the frigid wind, and the very real possibility that he might not find Splendor.

  Finally, he caught sight of the woods and saw a bright light moving within the coal-black shadows. “Splendor!”

  As the horse raced closer to the forest, the light became more vivid, and after a few more seconds it was so bright that Jourdian could no longer look at it. Shielding his eyes from its blinding severity, he slowed his mount to a halt and leaped to the ground. “Splendor!”

  “I am here, Jourdian.”

  He lowered his hands from his eyes so he could see her, but the dazzling light in the woods was simply too intense to behold. “I can’t see you! The light’s too bright!”

  Instantly, Splendor draped her long, thick hair over the basket she held. “There. ’Tis not as fierce now.”

  Blinking, Jourdian directed his gaze toward the sound of her voice and saw her. As he looked at her, he realized that the blazing light he’d seen lay within the basket that swayed from her hands.

  Snow, ice, and frozen twigs crunching beneath his boots, he ran toward her. “Why are you returning to Pillywiggin?” he shouted, grasping her bare shoulders. “What is this about leaving at midnight?”

  “If I do not return, I shall die,” she answered quietly, but her voice trembled.

  “Die?” His hands fell from her shoulders and dangled at his sides. “What do you mean, you’ll die?”

  Splendor nodded, then touched her fingers to the cut on his lip. The wound vanished. “A fairy can remain in the human world but three months. My three months are over at midnight. If I stay longer, I shall perish. The one thing that can keep me here…keep me alive and well is the magic of human love, for ’tis a magic far greater than any known in Faerie.”

  Jourdian tried to swallow, but couldn’t.

  Die.

  Die.

  Die.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he shouted. “Why, damn it all? Why?”

  “’Twould nay have made you love me, Jourdian. And when I first came to you three months ago, I did not know I would want to stay. I did not imagine I would fall in love with you. ’Twas not my intention to love you, but when I realized that the one thing you lacked in your life was love, that became the one thing I wanted to give you. In my ignorance, I failed to understand that once I loved you I would nay want to leave you.”

  When he didn’t reply, she sought to fill the tense silence. “Look what I have been gathering,” she murmured, holding up her basket. “One by one, all your wishing stars were falling from the sky. But I have found them all.”

  “I don’t want to talk about a damn lot of stars! You’re not going anywhere tonight, do you hear me? I won’t let you!”

  “’Tis almost midnight,” she whispered. “Already I feel a pull toward Pillywiggin.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, thinking to overpower the tug she felt toward her father’s kingdom.

  “The strength of your body cannot keep me here, Jourdian,” Splendor told him softly. “Only the s
trength in your heart is mightier than the force of Faerie.”

  The frosty wind whipped around his body, but he began to perspire. “Splendor,” he said, his voice but a hoarse whisper, “try to stay. Fight this—”

  “I cannot.”

  “Yes, you can, damn it all! They can’t take you away from me, no matter what they—”

  “I must go,” she breathed into his ear. “’Tis time.”

  He saw specks of glittering silver begin to appear around her, circling her. With one hand, he tried to swat them all away, but more appeared.

  And Splendor began to fade.

  “Do you love me, Jourdian?”

  A myriad of emotions twisted through Jourdian’s heart, each vying for his full attention. But he could hardly separate them, much less define them.

  “Jourdian?”

  “Don’t leave me, Splendor.” He tried to hold her tighter, but her body lost its substance and she became but an image in his arms.

  “I love you,” she whispered, her tears falling so quickly that Jourdian’s entire shoulder was covered with the diamond bits. “Never forget how much I love you.”

  The silver magic lifted her out of his embrace and carried her closer to the woods.

  “Splendor!”

  She didn’t answer.

  He watched her move her hair away from the basket and draw forth his wishes. She held them toward the sky, and their searing brilliance forced him to turn away.

  When he looked back again, Splendor was gone.

  The only evidence that she had even existed was a pool of diamonds and an empty basket lying upon a drift of moon-silvered snow.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  A shout caused Jourdian to growl with irritation. Shifting, he sought the comfort of sleep again.

  The shout came closer, became louder. Jourdian finally opened his eyes, only to have them pierced by bright shards of late morning sunshine that stabbed through a solid wall of windows. He head throbbed; his stomach rolled.

  What the hell was the matter with him, and where the hell was he?

  Glancing around, he realized he was in the conservatory, lying on the floor amidst a veritable jungle of plants and flowers. Two empty bourbon bottles lay beside him, and he understood he’d drunk himself into a stupor.

  He took a slow, deep breath, careful not to move his aching head while he tried to remember what terrible thing had driven him to drink. But no memory would come to his liquor-drenched mind.

  “Jourdian!”

  Recognizing the shout as belonging to Emil, Jourdian staggered to his feet, holding his head and resisting the wave of nausea that flooded his insides. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emil storm into the room.

  Emil took one look at his cousin and stopped short. Anger made him want to hit his cousin harder than he had the night before. “Have you been here all night?” he yelled. “Your staff and I have been looking for you since dawn!”

  “Emil, please,” Jourdian entreated, closing his eyes and leaning against the wall. “Cease that shouting. I feel as though I have been run over by an entire herd of elephants. Be a good chap and fetch Splendor, will you? One touch from her, and I’ll be right again.”

  “Splendor’s not here, Jourdian. Did you drink so much that you erased last night from your mind?”

  Jourdian tried to understand what his cousin was talking about, but no thoughts could get through the pain in his head. “What about last night?” he muttered, rubbing his throbbing temples.

  If he had thought it would have done a bit of good, Emil would have thrashed Jourdian within an inch of his life. “She left you. She had to, don’t you remember? She could stay here for only three months without your loving her. You chose not to love her, so she returned to Pillywiggin.”

  A long moment passed before Emil’s words permeated Jourdian’s foggy brain, but when comprehension finally came to him, it arrived like a sudden clap of thunder.

  He jerked himself away from the wall, wide awake now. “Splendor—”

  “You’re a cad.”

  Gone, Jourdian thought. Splendor was really and truly gone.

  Guilt ate at him, leaving a huge gaping hole of emptiness inside him.

  But no one, not even Emil, would know the extent of his torment.

  “As thick as a plank cad, Jourdian!”

  “She should have told me, damn it all. She knew she could only stay for three months, but she failed to tell—”

  “What does that matter now?”

  His head reeling, Jourdian started to leave the room.

  Emil grabbed his arm. “How could you? All she needed was your love—”

  “Love isn’t something that can be turned on and off like a machine!”

  “Didn’t you feel anything at all for her?” Emil demanded.

  “I cared about her. But that’s not love, and there you have it.”

  “You didn’t love her, or you wouldn’t love her?” Emil returned coldly.

  Jourdian straightened to his full height, ignoring the sharp pain in his head, and trying his damnedest to conceal the ache in his heart. “One can make oneself do many things. If I must, I can make myself smile when I don’t feel like smiling. I can eat when I’m not hungry, and I can force myself to read and comprehend literature that is a thundering bore. But I cannot make myself love! Either I love or I don’t, and that is the end of this—”

  “Splendor,” Emil said softly. “She granted every wish you’ve ever had.”

  “That’s tosh. She—”

  “It isn’t tosh, and you know it.”

  Jourdian didn’t care for the knowing look he saw in Emil’s topaz eyes. “When did you hear me wish for a woman who shrinks when deprived of a few blasted kisses? Who must hide from a cat for fear of it eating her for dinner! Who gets swallowed up by a cloud of mist when her feelings are hurt? When did you ever hear me wish for a fairy wife!”

  Emil could hold back his temper no longer. He shoved Jourdian’s shoulder with all his might. “Splendor’s being a fairy ceased to bother you weeks ago! You hated being so lonely, and when she got here you weren’t lonely anymore! You wanted someone to understand you, to listen to you, and comfort you, and Splendor did all that and more!”

  “You—”

  “And you wanted a wife who would love you for who you are inside. A wife who would love Jourdian Amberville, not the powerful and wealthy duke of Heathcourte. Splendor loved the man. Not the duke.”

  Again, Jourdian started for the door.

  Emil barred the way. “Those wishes of yours all came true, Jourdian, but there remain a few that haven’t. What man doesn’t wish to be happy until the day he dies? What man doesn’t wish for a lifelong partner who will love him forever? You should have taken heed of those wishes while Splendor was still here, cousin. They’ll never be granted now because the woman who tried to grant them for you is gone, and she’s never coming back!”

  Stiffly, Jourdian walked around Emil and through the doorway.

  Emil followed. “You resisted your feelings for her, Jourdian. It was your own bloody pride that kept you from allowing your emotions free rein. Your pride and your fear!”

  At that, Jourdian stopped. “Fear?”

  “Yes, fear! You’re afraid the same thing will happen to you as happened to your father! He almost lost everything, and you—”

  “I’m warning you now, Emil—”

  “Splendor never had a chance to win your love, did she? You couldn’t love her because to do so would have meant risking everything you’ve worked so hard to attain. The strength behind your name. The might behind your wealth. The power behind your title. Those things mean more to you than the beautiful woman who blew into your life and made you smile. Who made you laugh, and who offered you her love with both hands. You aren’t a cad, Jourdian. A cad, at least, is a living, breathing person. You’re naught but ice. A finely chiseled block of ice.”

  Emil pulled back his shoulders. “Now, if you will excuse me, I
am leaving to go be with my wife. A pity you cannot say and do the same.”

  With that, Emil disappeared down the hall.

  During the weeks that followed Splendor’s return to Faerie, Jourdian barely ate. Barely slept.

  He worked. He set the business world on fire, and within a month he knew that not only was the Amberville fortune the most impressive in England but that it was also one of the largest in Europe.

  He refused to discuss Splendor with anyone, and by working as hard as he was, he succeeded in keeping himself from thinking about her. If a thought about her did manage to creep into his mind, he quickly buried it.

  He would forget her, he swore. The three months he’d spent with her were over. And the memories of those months were dead.

  Until a letter from Gloucester arrived and resurrected them.

  The orchards were saved from devastation and would make a strong and speedy recovery, the overseer of the fields had written. Out of nowhere an enormous flock of birds had arrived, and the thousands of feathered creatures had neatly and swiftly consumed every last grasshopper on every last fruit tree.

  The overseer added that in all his years of experience, he had never witnessed such a strange occurrence as the sudden and timely arrival of the birds, which were not of the same variety, but of dozens of different species. He called it a miracle.

  Jourdian called it magic. Only a fairy could have talked a huge flock of various birds into doing her bidding.

  He felt something open inside him. His heart. And out of it burst all the memories and emotions he’d entombed there.

  Damn it all, why did the blasted letter have to come? He’d been fine before its arrival! Absolutely and totally fine!

  And now he wasn’t fine. Now he had memories to deal with. To somehow bury again.

  Laying the letter aside, he rose from his desk chair, pushed his hands into his pockets, and ambled to the window. Rain splattered against the pane.

  There are some who believe rain has no color… Rain is silver and iridescent. Your eyes are such a silver.