Rouh’Allah set the plates at Rebekah’s feet. She inhaled his scent as the borders of his cape brushed against her. Without having to touch her nose to his skin, she knew he smelled right. She picked a handful of pistachios and began shelling them in quick succession as if the crackling would erase the merchant’s tone, which had thrust her into a flurry of clashing emotions.

Rouh’Allah tore his stare from her bare toes and took in her henna-tinted fingertips, the vein that throbbed at the curve of her neck, beneath the glass-bead necklace that sparkled like her eyes, the mint leaves that peeked from behind her ear. His gaze stopped on her plump breasts, embraced the rise and fall of her bosom. Were the tales about the mark in the center of her breasts true? If only he could touch his lips to her bosom, caress her wounded fingers, smooth her glass-studded skirt over her thighs, brush her toes against his mouth.

Rebekah’s fingers fluttered over the buttons of her vest. Her nipples shriveled with humiliation. She raised her eyes and was surprised to meet the uncertain gaze of a man who might desire a virtuous woman. Later she would tell herself that if she had not been drowning in the highs and lows of his voice, she would have noticed the defiance of a man who had at last come to terms with a dilemma he had been struggling with for some time.

He smiled. Opened his mouth to say something. Brushed invisible particles from his robe. Could this grand man be nervous in her presence?

“Years ago,” he said at last, “I had asked for the hand of the prettiest girl in the Jewish Quarter, a girl with violet eyes and golden curls. But, alas, your mother chose a man much wealthier than I for you. My loss.”

The last decayed threads that linked her past to the present snapped. Long ago, she had lost faith in God. Today she lost faith in her mother, who had married her to Jacob the Fatherless, who had branded her and dispatched her to hell.

Now, after years, the padlock of her heart had gathered rust, become hard and impossible to unlock. The grief inside her chest persisted, as fresh as at the moment of Gold Dust’s birth. With the pain had come rewards. Gold Dust. Eternal youth. The ability to sniff the Devil from many farsangs away. The capacity to cherish the scent of forests and ancient cypress that drifted from the merchant’s cloak with every flutter of his arm as he moved closer to her. But she had not learned to recognize love.

“Fate has its own logic,” Rouh’Allah murmured.

Rebekah swallowed her tears. She set the pistachio shells on the corner of a plate and noticed the gold-trimmed edge. That extra bit of opulence depleted her last vestige of courage. Why did he have to evoke the past? She was sad. She was angry. If she did not start talking, she would rush out and never look back. “Your Honor,” she blurted, “I came here for a reason from which I believe both of us would benefit.”