“Or you have,” said Rebekah, smiling. Dim though the nearly moonless night might be, her eyes were used to it by now, and she could see that Akyas’s face was not just pretty in the way people thought, but also lively and intelligent. “I’m so glad I came tonight, though I was afraid you wouldn’t want me.”

“Afraid?” asked Akyas, laughing softly. “You walked right into my tent.”

“But your man outside told me—”

“It’s all right,” said Akyas. “As I said, I hoped you would come. Ezbaal suggested that I stay hidden and veiled, partly I suppose out of pique—he didn’t like having to bargain for you sight unseen—but I thought it would make everything simpler, too. The hardest part of my seclusion has been not seeing you.”

“You flatter me.”

“Not at all. I thought I might gain you as a sister, but will you mind too much that I will have you as daughter instead?”

“Not too much,” said Rebekah with a smile. “I was the first to suggest to Father that there was more than one way to tie the families together.”

Akyas reached out and brushed a wisp of hair out of Rebekah’s face. “Who tends your hair?”

“Deborah, my nurse.”

“You still have a nurse?”

“I was so young when my mother died, Deborah is the only mother I knew. She’s also a kinswoman, and just a bit feeble-minded. She serves me well, and I plan to keep her with me all my life.”

“You’re loyal, then.”

Why did Akyas still seem to be measuring her? “Loyalty begets loyalty,” she answered. “Deborah would die for me. I’m the center of her life.”

“So you have not been wishing for a mother.”

“I see mothers all around me. I don’t see how they treat their children differently from the way Deborah treated me. I think what I’ve missed isn’t so much a mother as having a wife in my father’s life. I see the other women with their husbands, and I think, was my mother like this with my father? Or like that? A nag? A scold? A cowering slave? Or a friend, a strong companion? Trusted or mistrusted? Things I’ll never know.”

“But haven’t you heard stories about her?”

“No one speaks of her,” said Rebekah. “When I was little, and I asked, they said Father didn’t like to have her spoken of. I suppose it made him too sad.”

“And what did he say?” asked Akyas.

“He just . . . didn’t answer, when I asked about her. But he got such a sad look on his face, so far away and regretful, that I learned not to mention her. Until his deafness, he was always with me, and I think I made him happy. I thought of that as my job in the camp, the way other women cook or farm or spin.”