Read Sarai (Jill Eileen Smith) for Free Online

grasses to the shade of a spreading terebinth tree—the place he often came to in the afternoons when he took his rest. She waited until he had settled himself into a comfortable position on the ground, then knelt near him.
    “What troubles you, my lord? How may I help?” She clasped her hands in her lap and studied his dear face.
    He looked at her, his gaze tender. “There are rumors.”
    He paused, and she had to bite her lip to keep from trying to hurry him along. “What rumors, my lord?”
    He shook his head as though his thoughts had been elsewhere and finally came back around to focus on her again. “I’m sorry, my love. I am distracted by many things. I should not have dragged you away from your work, but Eliezer has just told me something . . . It concerns me, concerns you.” He paused again and reached for her hand. “I want you to promise me something.”
    “Anything, my lord.” Fear coiled inside of her at the look in his eyes.
    “Eliezer lost his wife to the king of Nineveh. He took her with him on a visit there and nearly lost his life when the king’s guards saw his wife’s beauty and snatched her from him.” His gaze grew intense, and Sarai’s fear grew with it. “I know you are a beautiful woman, fairer than any woman in Ur and beyond, and I fear that as we travel, we could suffer the same fate.”
    She drew in a sharp breath. “What will we do? We must obey the Lord and leave this place. But how will we keep this from happening to us?” Her stomach plummeted at the thought of being snatched from him. He had always been her protector, her keeper. Even as a child, he had shown an older-brother protectiveness of her. Who would watch out for her if he were killed along the way? But surely not. Surely his God would be their rear guard.
    But the look in Abram’s eyes told her even he didn’t believe the matter would concern Adonai. They must take action themselves.
    “I’ve given this much thought, Sarai, and I see only one solution.” He squeezed her fingers, and she drew support from his strength. “This is your kindness that you should do for me: in every place, wherever we go, say of me, ‘He is my brother,’ that it may go well with me, that my life might be spared.”
    His words were barbs, wounding her, but as she read the fear in his gaze, she knew she could deny him nothing. Yet what would such a thing mean? She glanced down at their intertwined hands. If she must go back to the time when he truly was only her brother, they would not be free to share the intimacies they did now. Memories of those long-ago days when she’d tried so hard to get him to notice her, when she’d pined after him, despairing that he would ever consider taking her to be his wife—would they be forced to return to such an arrangement whenever they joined another caravan or visited a town or a foreign land? How could she bear it?
    His fingers touched her chin, gently coaxing her to look into his face once more. “I need your word, Sarai. I wouldn’t ask such a thing . . .” He glanced away. “It will mean, of course, that at times you cannot share my bed . . .” His voice trailed off.
    “How will I ever bear the promised child then, my lord? And what if he grows even now in my womb? I would be a woman scorned worse than I am now, to bear a child without a husband. How can you ask this of me?” Tears thickened her throat. But she knew by the disbelief in his eyes that he did not think her womb had quickened and did not worry that such a thing would confront them. Was he worried only for his own life then? What of hers? What if she was taken as Eliezer’s wife had been? A shudder passed through her.
    “You won’t be taken. If the promised child grows within you, I will protect you as any brother would. As I did before we married.”
    “You barely noticed me then.” Bitterness tinged her tone.
    “I saw everything about you, dearest Sarai. Since the time of your maturity, I’ve loved