“My little girl,” said Deborah proudly. “You have grown up just as I hoped you’d be. Pretty and clever . . . and you don’t spit.”

Rebekah pulled away from her, looked at her face to see if she could possibly have meant those words sarcastically. But no, there was nothing but beatific happiness in Deborah’s face. She was incapable of irony. It was Rebekah’s own guilty conscience that put barbs into Deborah’s words.

You have grown up just as I hoped you’d be, Deborah was saying. And that was it. A child growing up as she was taught. That was the loophole, the twist, the trick in the deal Akyas offered her. Ezbaal might let Rebekah worship no other god but God—but nothing had been said about the children they’d have together. He would raise them up to pray in the high places and dance in the groves, enemies of God. What would it matter to her then, that she could pray to God, that she was pure of the defilement of idolatry, if her children were polluted from the cradle up?

I hoped that by making them hate me, I would spare myself an argument with Father. But since that plan has failed, I will have that argument, and I will win it, because I will never marry a man who would teach my children to love any god but God.

And once Father realizes what a marriage to Ezbaal would mean, he would never dream of requiring such a thing of me.

But after what Pillel said, Rebekah was not sure of this at all.

Please, God of Abraham and Sarah, she said silently. Please fight for me. I haven’t the strength to stand alone, if all are against me.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

It was after dark when at last Rebekah was summoned to Father’s tent—a servant’s whisper at her tent door, so as not to waken anyone else in the camp—and by the time she hurried outside, no one to be seen.

We will do this in stealth, in darkness, in silence, thought Rebekah. The marriage plan will unravel, but there will never be a quarrel that Ezbaal might hear.

Father, Laban, and Pillel were all waiting in his tent, their faces barely visible in the light of a single lamp that flickered with every movement of an arm or leg that might start the wick bobbing in the oil. Laban greeted her with a raised eyebrow, though what he meant by it Rebekah could not guess. Pillel was made of stone. But Father . . . could it be tears shimmering in his eyes?