Winter Is Past

Winter Is Past
Ruth Axtell Morren

Mills & Boon Silhouette
A rising star in Parliament, widower Simon Aguilar needs a reliable woman to care for his gravely ill daughter, Rebecca. He finds an exemplary nurse–and much more–in the indomitable Althea Breton.Raised amid privilege, Althea renounced wealth and social position to serve God, and is reluctant to work for a man who became a Christian only to further his political career. But realizing that all things are possible with God's love, she accepts the position.Despite Simon's skepticism, Althea comforts Rebecca by teaching her about God and salvation. Meanwhile, an attraction grows between the darkly handsome MP and the understated beauty whose integrity and competence win over his entire household. Althea admires Simon's devotion as a father, his sense of justice as a politician and his tenderness as a man, but his antipathy toward her faith divides them. When Simon's world suddenly falls apart, can Althea convince him to open his heart to God's love–and her own?

Winter Is Past

Winter Is Past

Ruth Axtell Morren

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

I wish to dedicate this story to:

Yeshua ha Mashiach,

who taught me that little becomes much

in the master’s hand;

To the Rebeccas I have known,

who went home early to be with Him;

And to Rick,

who has given me the opportunity to

study the male psyche up close over the years.

Contents

Foreword

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Epilogue

FOREWORD

When a cousin of mine began investigating the possibilities of Jewish ancestry in our family’s Colombian/Venezuelan roots, I suddenly became interested in the Sephardic branch of Judaism. Soon I was fascinated with the story of the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain in 1492.

In Spain, under the Inquisition, thousands of Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism. However, many of them continued to practice their religion clandestinely. When they were expelled from Spain and eventually migrated to Holland, the Middle East, England and the New World, they were more accustomed, perhaps, than Ashkenazi and other non-Sephardic Jews, to leading a “double life” between outward Christianity and inner Judaism.

During the early nineteenth century, when Winter Is Past takes place, Jews living in England were gaining greater acceptance in mainstream Christian society, though the old prejudices were still thriving. I’ve used this background in telling the story of Methodist nurse Althea Breton and her employer, Simon Aguilar, a Jew by birth who has for political reasons become a member of the Church of England. When Althea meets Simon for the first time, she faces her own ugly prejudices against Jews. At first afraid and unsure of what to expect from this “foreign man,” Althea realizes that she has believed half-truths, not God’s true word regarding the Jewish people. Soon, through her faith and newly gained knowledge of Simon and his family, Althea comes to see that Jews, much like Christians, are people of faith, family and love. Sadly, it took somewhat longer for England to officially acknowledge this.

The most famous story of an English converso is Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881). He was a Sephardic Jew whose family migrated to England from Italy. Although his career in Parliament didn’t begin until about a decade after Simon’s, Disraeli, too, received baptism as an adolescent, attended a private school run by an independent minister and was elected to Parliament. Back then, only baptized members of Britain’s official state church could receive higher education, wed legally or hold public office. Luckily, in 1858, a law was passed making it legal for Jews to be admitted as members of Parliament, paving the way for Disraeli as England’s first and only Jewish prime minister.

For further reading on Sephardic Jewry, I highly recommend The Cross and the Pear Tree: A Sephardic Journey by Victor Perera.

Chapter One

London, 1817

“So you’re the miracle worker.”

Althea stared back at the man addressing her across the wide mahogany desk, his eyes deep and dark and mocking. They held mystery and an ancestry centuries old. The small, wire-rimmed oval spectacles did nothing to diminish the force of the hooded brown irises fringed by thick lashes and framed by heavy, black brows.