Wild Jasmine Read Free

play one of her games. Adali cannot find her. She is hiding in the gardens from us and she will not come out!”
    Prince Salim chuckled indulgently. “I will ferret her out,” hesaid, and moved down the steps from the colonnaded porch into the garden. “Yasaman, my little sweetmeat, where are you?” he called in dulcet tones.
    “ Salim? Is it you?” his sister’s voice called back.
    “It is I, my adorable one. Come out! Our grandmother is coming to visit at any time now. You know how she dislikes being kept waiting.” His dark eyes scanned the greenery before him, seeking for some movement that would betray the child.
    “ You must find me! ” she teased him wickedly.
    He laughed. He had never imagined when this youngest child of his father’s had been born six years ago that he, a grown man even then, could be overwhelmingly enchanted by so small a human being. His own children had never appealed to him so; but he adored this baby half sister of his. “Very well, you naughty monkey, I shall find you, and when I do, I shall spank your little bottom for this lack of respect,” the prince threatened.
    Yasaman giggled in reply.
    Salim glanced back at his aunt and saw that she was looking even more frantic. The time for subtlety was obviously over. Carefully, he looked about the garden, seeking some small thing out of place, and then he saw it—a small scrap of red gauze amid the Crown Imperials. Softly he crept toward the spot, and then, with a noisy cry, he swooped down to capture his crouching prey. With a shriek of surprise she squirmed from his grasp, black hair flying, and dashed past him, but Salim was quicker. Catching his little sister once again, he lifted her up and carried her kicking and raging to where Rugaiya Begum awaited. A firm but loving smack upon her small posterior silenced her temporarily.
    “Here is your daughter, Aunt,” Salim said. He set the child upon her bare feet, but kept a firm hand upon her head.
    “Thank you, Salim,” Rugaiya Begum said. “Will you stay and have refreshments with us when your grandmother arrives? She will count it a great bonus to see you too.”
    “I thank you for your invitation, Aunt. Yes, I will stay,” he replied.
    “How did you find me when Adali could not?” Yasaman demanded, looking up at her adored eldest brother, her startling turquoise-blue eyes curious.
    “I looked carefully about the garden, my little monkey, and saw the edge of your skirt,” he told her with a superior smile.“There it was fluttering bright and scarlet amongst the yellow Crown Imperials.”
    “Adali’s eyes are not as sharp as yours, my brother,” Yasaman noted as the eunuch came noisily puffing up to them.
    “I will deliver her to Toramalli and Rohana to be prepared,” Adali said to Rugaiya Begum, taking Yasaman’s little hand in his. “You have been most naughty, my princess,” he scolded his little mistress as he led her into the palace.
    “It is not fun always being good, Adali,” she answered him.
    Her honesty brought a smile to the faces of both Rugaiya Begum and Prince Salim.
    “She has brought you much joy, hasn’t she, Aunt?” the young man said.
    “She is the child of my heart, even if I did not bear her,” Rugaiya Begum said quietly. “I wonder if Candra thinks often of her.”
    “Perhaps she does,” the prince said. He had not known his father’s young English wife particularly well. She had been with them so short a time. “Then again,” Salim said, “perhaps she does not think of Yasaman at all. She was, after all, returned to another husband. Surely she has had other children. Those children and their care would possibly take her mind from Yasaman.”
    “How could a woman forget her first child?” Rugaiya said indignantly. “I do not believe that Candra has ever forgotten her daughter! She was not that kind of woman.”
    The prince shrugged. “In the almost six years since she has been gone, has she ever once written a letter to