James Leslie had also entered the archery contest. Jasmine stood by his side, fidgeting. Her father and her brothers had taught her to shoot. “Why can’t women enter the games?” she demanded of her husband. “I’m as good an archer as any man, dammit!”
“Women don’t come to the games to compete,” the earl said.
“Well I wouldn’t want to in most of your sports,” Jasmine responded. “They’re much too rough, but women hunt, too. They know how to use a bow. I think women should be allowed to compete in archery.”
“Next she’ll be wanting to join the dancing,” Adam Leslie snickered. “Lassie, lassie, keep to yer place.”
“My place?”Jasmine’s turquoise eyes flashed, and in that moment her husband caught a glimpse of the Mughal’s daughter. “And, what, pray, good uncle, ismy place?”
Adam Leslie had also in the same moment as his nephew seen something so fierce and so royal in his nephew’s wife that he had almost been frightened. Drawing a deep breath he said, further compounding his blunder, “Why, lassie, ‘tis yer place to be a good and obedient wife to Jemmie Leslie and gie the family healthy bairns.”
Fiona began to giggle. The earl groaned.
“In other words, Uncle, I should keep silent, bow to my lord’s wishes, and spend my life up on theben enciente!”She snatched her husband’s longbow and notched an arrow into it. Drawing the string back, she let the missile fly. It hit the target dead center. Pulling another arrow from its holder she fitted it into the bow, and loosed it. It split the first arrow in the target. Shoving the bow back at her husband, Jasmine said scathingly, “Any man who can match that shot will have five gold piecesfrom me. Is there any man here who would try?” She looked about the dumbstruck men. “No one?” Jasmine Leslie turned her back on the astounded men and walked away.
“Jesu!” Jock Bruce said admiringly. “She’s even more woman than yer mother was, Jemmie Leslie! Where the hell did she ever learn to shoot like that? And why would a woman want to shoot?”
“She was her father’s youngest child, born in his old age, and he doted upon her as did her eldest brother. They taught her so she could hunt with them,” the earl of Glenkirk said.
“What a braw lassie! Ye’ll get strong sons off of her,” the host of the games said, “and she’d be mighty handy in a siege, too.”
His remark broke the tension left by Jasmine’s anger, and the men laughed heartily, but the earl of Glenkirk was not amused. His wife had embarrassed him publicly not just by her actions, which had been spectacular to say the least, but by her sharp words, heard by all. He turned and stamped back to their tent. There he found Jasmine calmly drinking a cup of wine. “Do wives in India shame their husbands publicly, madame?” he demanded of her.
“This is not India,” she said calmly.
“Nay, madame, it is not.It is Scotland!And in Scotland women do not discomfit their men before a crowd,” he told her.
“You are just angry because I am a better shot with the longbow than you are,” she said airily. Jasmine was feeling much better now.
“Aye, you are,” he agreed, “but your words were far sharper than your arrows, and wives here do not openly speak to their husbands as you spoke to me back at the archery trial.”
“‘Twas not you with whom I was irritated,” Jasmine replied. “‘Twas your uncle Adam. He thinks all women shouldbe humble, meek, and barefoot wi bairns,” shegently mockedAdam’s accent.
“My uncle is of the old school,” the earl told his wife. “He believes that a woman should defer to her lord.”
“Like your Aunt Fiona?” Jasmine replied scathingly. “She leads him by the nose, Jemmie!”
“Aye, she does, but he doesn’t know it,” the earl said. “I will tell you something that few people know, or remember. My Aunt Fiona was a wild creature in her youth. They say her wifely ardor put her first husband into an early grave, but he was a weak creature. Widowed, she set her sights upon my father, and why not? She was every bit his equal in breeding, being an earl’s daughter. My father entered his bedchamber one evening to find Fiona there, naked upon his bed, for she sought to compromise him before he could wed my mother. Uncle Adam was with my father. He had always desired Fiona, and so my father slept in his brother’s room that night while Adam tamed his Fiona. In the early days of their marriage Fiona was his slave, but then one day she realized he needed her every bit as much as she needed him. From that moment on my aunt has manipulated my uncle, but she does it in such a way that he believes nothing has ever changed and that he is still the master of his house. Fiona is very clever, darling Jasmine.”
Jasmine put her silver cup down. “Are you suggesting that Imanipulateyou, my lord?” She smiled wickedly.
He laughed in spite of himself. “Be serious, madame,” he scolded her. “My uncle is of a different time and sees women as all men saw them forty years ago. As most men in Scotland today still see their women. This is not England, with its more liberal appreciation of the fair sex, darling Jasmine. What is between us is private, but in public I do not believe I am asking too much when I ask you to yield before my manly superiority.” His green-gold eyes were twinkling as he said these last words. “And youmust find a way to make your peace with my uncle, sweetheart.” He took her hand in his and kissed it.
She poured him his own cup of wine, and handed it to him. “What am I to say to him?” she asked. “That I might be breeding again?”
“Aren’t you?”he said knowingly.
“Perhaps,” she said. “I am not certain yet.How did you know?”
Pulling her from her seat, he sat down in it, drawing her into his lap and cuddling her. “Because there is nothing about you, darling Jasmine, that I do now know; no nuance of which I am not acutely aware. You are the breath I breathe; the very beating of my heart; a part of my soul.” He kissed her slowly, deeply, lingeringly; his big hand cupping her dark head, his fingers kneading her scalp.
She sighed, molding herself close against him. “Jemmie! Jemmie!” she murmured breathlessly, pulling away from him. “The whole encampment will see us! We are not alone. What will they say?”
“They will say the earl of Glenkirk is a fool for his beautiful wife, who talks far too much for her own good,” he replied, kissing her again, “and that the earl of Glenkirk should beat his beautiful wife occasionally to keep her docile and amenable to his will.”
“You would never beat me,” Jasmine said, dismissing his words.
“Nay, I would not,” he agreed, “but if you do not behave yourself while we are here at the games, I may be tempted to give your pretty bottom a smack, madame!”
