Rachel by Jill Smith Page B

guilt cut through him as though it were yesterday, and with it an unnamed fear. Slowly, as one still awakening from sleep, he rose on one elbow and faced her. Hair the color of Rachel’s, yet with ruddy streaks of the same red that covered Esau’s frame from head to foot, spilled over creamy tan shoulders. His heart stopped.
    He drew a ragged breath, his fingers moving of their own accord to brush the hair from her eyes. She lifted their closed lids. Met his gaze with eyes too pale, unable to hold his without skipping to some point behind him.
    Leah!
    “What are you doing here?” The words choked him, and he backed away from her, sure she had singed him. His limbs felt like fire as he pushed to his feet. “Why are you in my bed?” Trembling seized him as flashes of the intimacies they’d shared mingled with the flashes of memories of his father’s shocked face, his brother’s fury.
    He did not wait for her to reply. He grabbed his robe from the floor, thrust his arms through the sleeves, and tied the belt in a careless knot, then stormed from the tent. Laban met him on the path to the house, where the servants hurried about cleaning the remnants of last night’s merrymaking. Wedding guests had left long ago but would return to celebrate every night for a week. For a wedding that was false!
    “What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn’t I?” Jacob’s voice rose with each word. “Why have you deceived me?” The urge to strike Laban rose so swiftly Jacob nearly gave in to it. But his own accusing fingers pointed back at him, quashing only some of his rage. He faced Laban, hands fisted at his sides. “Tell me!”
    Laban took a step back as if he did not trust Jacob’s response, but before the man could speak, a figure emerged from the house draped in the same soft robe and tunic she’d worn the first day she met him in the fields with the sheep.
    Rachel. Ah, Rachel! A deep groan fought its way through him, begging release. She stood there, her dark eyes filled with such pain he felt the dagger plunging to his marrow. They had both been tricked, kept from each other. For what?
    Anger surged again, and he faced her father. “Why have you done this?”
    Her father’s dark eyes held his. Why had he never noticed before how calculating their gleam? “It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one.”
    “I was not told of such a custom. If this were true, why not marry the other off years ago?” He could not bear to say her name. “You had seven years!”
    Laban’s head bobbed as it always did when he intended to be amiable. “Finish this daughter’s bridal week,” he said, grasping one of Jacob’s shoulders. “Then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work.”
    Jacob stared at the man, dumbstruck. Another seven years?His mother and father might not live long enough to meet Rachel if he stayed. But as he met Laban’s gaze, he knew he would not be released of his debt so easily. Laban would keep him here by whatever deception.
    He glanced in Rachel’s direction. How lost and small she seemed. He would work a lifetime for her alone. And if that meant seven more years, he would do it. Not for Leah. For Rachel.
    “She will be mine at week’s end. I will not wait.” Jacob would battle the man to the grave if he must.
    Laban patted his shoulder, then stepped back, giving a curt nod. “After this daughter’s week ends, the younger will be yours as well.”
    “Rachel will be mine.” He grasped Laban’s arm, his grip firm.
    Laban glanced from Jacob’s hand to meet his gaze once more. “Rachel will be yours,” he said at last, shaking free of Jacob’s hold.
    Jacob stood a moment more, some of his fury subsiding as he watched Laban walk to Rachel’s side and guide her back into the house. His pulse slowly returned to a normal rhythm. He would dress and go to the fields until the week ended, but Laban