LITMIR.BIZ

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lose?” she asked low.

      “The stake is yours to choose,” he replied.

      “You will not enter my bed until we are wed.” The words were out of her mouth before she even had time seriously to consider them. Why on earth had she said them, she wondered, feeling a sense of loss as his hands fell away from her waist. Did she really want to hold him off until the middle of June? It was too late to recant.

      He chuckled. “Done, madame!” he said, leading her into the château. “I look forward to our match—and to after the match.”

      “For so mediocre a player you are overconfident, Jemmie,” she said sharply. His attitude was mightily irritating.

      “I do not intend losing tonight, Jasmine,” he answered her. “The prize is too tempting and delectable a one to forfeit.”

      She pulled from his grasp and ran up the staircase to her bedchamber, ordering her servants to prepare her bath as she entered her quarters. Rohana and Toramalli hurried to do her bidding.

      “You are disturbed,” Adali noted. “What has upset you, mistress?”

      “I have agreed to a chess match with Lord Leslie, and we have made a wager to make our game more interesting. I think I have been foolish, Adali, for I am not certain if I want to win.”

      The eunuch chuckled as he helped her to divest herself of her garments. “Tell me,” he said, and then burst into laughter when she had finished. “Ahh, my princess, once long ago, when your father sought to bed your mother for the first time, he played a game of chess with her. It was in the royal city of Fatehpur-Sikri. Together your parents stood on a balcony. The courtyard below them was a chessboard of black-and-white marble squares. The pieces were live slaves, naked but for the jewels they wore, except, of course, the king and queen pieces, who were magnificently garbed and bejeweled.”

      “Did my mother win?” Jasmine asked Adali.

      He shook his head. “Nay, she did not. The wager between them, however, was but a kiss. It was several nights later before your father gained his objective, and then only through the aid of the pillow book that Jodh Bai gave your mother.”

      Now it was Jasmine’s turn to chuckle. “So history is about to repeat itself, Adali,” she said.

      “Are you certain you wish to lie with him now, my princess? I have seen your reluctance to accept this man.”

      “I must wed him, Adali,” she replied, “and I find that I do like him. He loves the children, and they love him, and he would have me give him sons. The wedding date is set, and I suddenly find I do not wish to postpone the inevitable. When we were speaking just now in the courtyard, I had the most disturbing thoughts regarding James Leslie. I believe it is time to end my celibacy, Adali.”

      “You will have to be very clever, my princess,” the trusted servant responded. “If Lord Leslie believes for one moment that you have allowed him to win the match, he will be most offended.”

      Jasmine smiled as he helped her into her waiting tub. “My father was the best chess player in all of India,” she reminded Adali, “and he never once knew that I let myself lose more often than not, did he?”

      Adali grinned. “Nay, my princess, the Mughal never knew that the student surpassed the master. You were adroit in your duplicity.”

      “I have not forgotten those skills,” she assured him.

      He left her to set up the chessboard in the hall.

      Rohana and Toramalli bathed their mistress carefully, having been party to her conversation with Adali. Afterward, wrapped in a towel and seated by her fire, Jasmine thought drowsy thoughts as Rohana slowly brushed her long black hair, drawing the perfumed brush through the silken swath until it gleamed. She yawned. It had been a long day, and she suddenly realized she was tired. “Give me some wine before I collapse,” she said to Toramalli. “The bath has rendered me weak.”

      “What will you wear?” Toramalli asked her as she brought her mistress the requested goblet of wine.

      “A chamber robe, I think,” came the reply.

      The servingwoman nodded and, choosing a silk garment in a rich plum color, brought it to her mistress, who stood up and let her towel fall, holding out her arms to don the robe. It had long flowing sleeves and closed with a small gold frog just below Jasmine’s breasts. Rohana then tied back her mistress’s hair with a silver ribbon. Plum-and-silver silk slippers completed Lady Lindley’s ensemble.

      Finishing the wine which had revived her, Jasmine instructed her servants to prepare the bed with fresh linens. “The lovely lavender-scented ones we just obtained from the convent nearby,” she said. Then she departed the bedchamber for the hall, where she found him awaiting her. She stared at his clothing. “A kilt?” she queried him.

      “A Scotsman always wears his kilt into battle, Jasmine, and so I am prepared to go to war with you this evening over the chessboard.”

      His shirt was open at the neck. She could see the dark hair upon his chest. Her eyes strayed to his long, sturdy legs, which were covered in dark hair. His knees were shapely and rounded. Forcing her eyes away from his form Jasmine tried to quiet her thoughts. She was suddenly behaving like a bitch in heat. She felt both hot and cold at the same time. What had her grandmother said about spring, and sap rising? “You are, as usual, my lord, overconfident,” she murmured with what she hoped was unconcerned disdain.

      The laugh that rumbled forth from his broad chest was openly knowing. “I have the strongest desire,” he told her, “to kiss that little mole of yours, darling Jasmine,” and, before she could evade him, he did just that, pressing his mouth against the teasing little beauty mark nature had placed between her left nostril and her upper lip.

      “You are too bold, sirrah!” she scolded him, pushing away. “Come, and let us begin our game.” She seated herself in the tapestry-backed chair by the hall fire, motioning him to the seat opposite her. “You may begin,” she told him.

      He calmly moved a pawn in a familiar and quite typical opening move. Then his eyes met hers.

      “ ’Tis hardly a challenging beginning,” she mocked him, but her own move was quite similar to his.

      The play now began in earnest. Jasmine kept up a taunting verbal assault as she played. Her tone was overbearing and overweening. She played hard, and he had not the slightest inkling that she was leading him carefully so that he could shortly capture her queen and win the match between them. She made a move, and then swore softly, reaching out to correct the apparently foolish maneuver, but he stopped her with his hand, shaking his head.

      “But I did not mean it,” she objected strongly. “I was distracted. Surely you will not hold me to such a play, Jemmie? ’Tis not fair!”

      “You removed your hand from the piece,” he said quietly.

      “But I did not mean to, sir! I was distracted,” she cried.

      “If our positions were reversed, Jasmine, would you allow me to replay the move?” he demanded of her.

      Her small white teeth worried her lower lip, and she did not answer him.

      James Leslie reached out and, taking the black onyx piece belonging to him, silently completed the winning move, palming her ivory queen gravely. Jasmine leapt to her feet and, turning, attempted to make her escape. He was quicker, however, and his hard arm wrapped itself about her slender waist, drawing her back against him. “Nay, madame, you cannot go until you have paid your forfeit,” he said softly, and his other hand firmly cupped one of her breasts. His warm breath in her ear sent a shiver up her spine. “Ya-sameen,” he murmured the name she had been given at birth, “how I long to possess you again. I have never forgotten that night we shared so long, long ago.” His thumb rubbed her nipple until it was stiff, and tingling.

      “The servants . . .” she protested.

      “Are too well trained by your Adali

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