Winter Is Past

He rolled the pen between his fingers.

Her eyes were fixed on the motion.

“You are correct in your supposition that it was a conversion in name only. Indispensable, you understand, for my entry into Parliament.”

He plucked at the dark sleeve of his jacket. “The marks of generations of Jewry cannot be so easily effaced, can they? Once a Jew, always a Jew—isn’t that what you think?” She stared at him, disconcerted by the frank admission of the purely materialistic rationale for his conversion.

“Tell me, my curiosity is piqued, did I meet all of your expectations? What did you come here expecting to see? An old man hunched over in a moldering coat, counting out his coin? Fangs, perhaps? A gross deformity? After all, we are the Jesus killers, are we not?”

He didn’t give her an opportunity to answer. “Well, Miss Breton, I can assure you, you shall be perfectly safe under my roof. I have managed to control the baser instincts of my race under this semblance of the gentleman you see before you.” He leaned back in his chair, his dark gaze assessing her, making her feel as if she were the one at fault.

She found herself struggling to meet that gaze, which seemed to see beyond her pious garb and acts of mercy, to something deep within her of which even she was unaware. This was ridiculous, she told herself. She had nothing to reproach herself for; she had seen firsthand what those moneylenders had accomplished with their extortionary techniques.

Deciding she would merely ignore his words, just as he had so many of her own, she asked, “What precisely are you looking for in a nurse?”

He looked at her as if trying to explain something to an imbecile. “Miss Breton, I am frequently not at home. I need someone I can trust with my child. I need someone to take care of her as if she were her own. I realize that may be difficult for a childless woman, much less a hired one, to comprehend, but nevertheless that is what I require. That is what Rebecca needs.” He sighed, raking a hand through his hair, a gesture Althea was coming to recognize as expressing his impatience with having to explain things to people of less astuteness or intelligence.

He gave her another assessing look. “I don’t expect you to understand this. I only agreed to this interview because your brother spoke so glowingly of your abilities. Quite frankly, I must admit my doubt.”

“I see,” she said, bowing her head and looking down at her tightly clasped hands, their firmness belying her inner trembling. She did not know what she had expected from this interview, but certainly not the doubt, much less the downright hostility, in the man before her. All at once it occurred to her that she had come harboring those very same sentiments, yet had felt perfectly justified in holding them. The realization piqued her conscience. For a split second she experienced the clarity of God’s spirit touching something within her. It was like a door opening upon an unused room, letting in a shaft of light. One could choose to shut the door, or allow it to open farther and flood the area. The latter way held an element of risk.

What had she expected from Mr. Aguilar? the still, small voice of the Spirit asked her. Gratitude for her condescending to leave her present position and come to his aid?

Her life was not her own. It hadn’t been for the past eight years. Whether she came into this household as a nurse was not up to her, nor even up to Simon Aguilar, she thought, looking up at the man seated behind the desk.

All she needed to know was whether her Lord and Savior Jesus was directing her to this household. Whether He was making her give up everything familiar, everything fulfilling—her very life’s work—for a season—a season of unknown duration—to come and serve in this household was not the issue.

She met Simon Aguilar’s gaze full on. “I can only say, give me a trial—whatever length you deem sufficient—a week, a fortnight—to satisfy yourself. I can only promise to do my best, by God’s grace, to help your daughter Rebecca in any way I can.”

Althea left, exhausted from the ordeal. She felt confused, deflated…downright terrified. How could the Lord possibly want her in the employ of one so irreverent and antagonistic of everything she believed in? She looked around at the neighborhood as she left the pale-blue stucco mansion on Green Street. Even the neighborhood contradicted all she’d given her life to in the past six years. Mayfair was as far from her present residence in Whitechapel as London from Bombay. She gave one last look down the street, taking in the black-painted, wrought-iron fences and neat tree-lined sidewalks as she mounted the coach. Before her ride was over, they would give way to the dirty, dilapidated buildings and muddy streets of the East End.

It took Simon a good quarter of an hour after Miss Breton’s departure to return to editing his speech on the repeal of the Corn Laws. It wasn’t every day the rank and file got the opportunity to address the ministers on the treasury bench, that coveted first row in the House of Commons. Backbenchers must stand awkwardly wedged between the tiered rows, clutching their notes but forbidden to read from them. Simon, gifted with oratory skills, relished the moment. After seven years in the House, he’d advanced from the top tier to the bench just behind the treasury bench, where Liverpool and all his cabinet lounged. He promised silently that he would make them sit up and pay attention.

But now the speech he had written in the wee hours of the previous night lay before him untouched as he thought about the woman he’d just interviewed. Simon twirled his quill between his fingertips more than once, his thoughts straying from the quotas and price fluctuations in imported and domestic wheat to the young lady who claimed to be a nurse.

Something more important than his career or the affordability of grain was at stake at the moment: his daughter’s well-being.

Very few things took precedence over his political career and the affairs of state. In fact, they were the only things he was passionate about. Simon had come to the conclusion long ago that he was in essence a cold-hearted, calculating man. Although he would defend his family’s honor to the grave, very few in that enormous tribe of Sephardic Jews known as the Aguilars truly engaged his heart.

He sometimes wondered if he even had a heart. The only proof to the contrary was his daughter. If anything showed he could still bleed it was Rebecca.

His fingers gripped the quill tightly until it broke. He would give anything to make her well.

He set down the mutilated pen and observed its ninety-degree bend. The question was, had he done right in agreeing to hire Miss Breton for a trial period? His glance strayed to the chair recently vacated by the lady in question. For indeed she was a lady, for all her Quakerish gown and renouncement of the honorific. Every well-modulated word, her very demeanor and bearing, spoke of good breeding. The kind of breeding his family had paid dearly for him to obtain.

Simon sighed, shoving aside the pen. He’d already been through three nurses—a fact he’d deliberately kept from Miss Breton.

At least she presented a more pleasing countenance than the other three, he admitted, recalling the slack-jawed, blank-eyed first nurse; the puckered mouth evidencing a lack of teeth and the greasy gray hair of the second; and the shifty-eyed, lipless third. Miss Breton, by contrast, struck him as neat and self-possessed, in her gray woolen frock with its starched white collar.

Simon picked up a new pen from the inkstand and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper from a drawer. He dipped the pen in ink and wrote Assets on one side and Liabilities on the other, then drew a neat line between the two.

Underneath the column Assets, he wrote in lowercase the word attractive. He’d definitely list that as an asset, thinking it would be beneficial to Rebecca’s well-being that she have a nice-looking nurse instead of an ill-looking one.

Simon went over Miss Breton’s features in his mind’s eye, from the head of frizzy, honey-hued curls that peeked through her plain gray bonnet to her small hands with their tapering fingertips, which she gripped whenever she seemed to refrain from speaking out.

He’d liked her eyes. They were that indeterminate shade between gray, pale blue and sea green. But there was something very forthright in her gaze, giving him a sense that her yea would be yea and her nay, nay.

Not like the last nurse, who’d tried to make him feel better by lying about Rebecca’s condition. Simon rubbed the back of his neck, still feeling the fury of discovering Rebecca with a fever he had not been told about.

He jotted down honesty under the Assets column, then blotted it carefully. After a few seconds, he added a question mark. He must still verify this quality. He would not be fooled a second time.

Yes, Miss Breton’s countenance had been fair—good patrician features, which he’d expected of the sister of Tertius Pembroke, the fourth Earl of Skylar. His mind cataloged them: a straight, well-shaped nose, nice rosy lips, a firm chin and a high, pale forehead. She didn’t look anything like Sky, however. She reminded him more of a country lass, the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose and the clear gaze evidence of sunshine and fresh air. It was ironic considering she lived in one of the dirtiest parts of London.

He frowned again over the irregularity of her name. Breton? She had explained she was Sky’s half sister. What did she mean by that? The old marquess had remarried? Simon wrote Breton? under Liabilities. He would question Sky about it the next time his friend was in town.

The main drawback to Miss Breton, he concluded, was her religion. A Methodist, she had called herself. He was familiar with the origins of Methodism in the last century under the Wesleys and Whitefield at Oxford. His lip curled in disdain; such a phenomenon would not have occurred at the Newtonian Cambridge, his own alma mater, the home of rationalism and mathematics.

The only trouble with religion, as Simon saw it, was that it was a way for the State to get its hands on hardworking people’s money and place it in the hands of a few of its own class. One of the greatest fights he anticipated taking on someday in Parliament was attacking the entire body of law giving the Church the right to confiscate a tenth of every landowner’s crop and cattle, in an ancient system of tithing.

The far more insidious evil of religion was the havoc it wreaked by the few who actually took it seriously. With them it was all or nothing, the result of which could be seen in the bloody wars and massacres over the continent in the last millennium, the brunt of which so often was felt by his own people.

Miss Breton, Simon could see clearly, fell into this latter category. He added to the Liabilities column: religious fervor. He underscored the word.

Lastly was the question of her nursing skills. They remained to be seen. He had only the word of Skylar—one of the few men he trusted—but still, Simon remained skeptical. He wrote nursing skills at the end of the columns, between the two, and added a question mark.

Althea awoke. She had been dreaming. She had been in the presence of Jesus! She knew it, recalled it vividly, still felt His presence all about her. She had no idea what time it was. Glancing toward the dormer window of her attic room, she saw no sign of light, but sensed it was earlier than her usual predawn time of rising.

She lay back against her pillow, trying to recapture the dream. Jesus had been talking to her; she remembered she’d been un-burdening her heart to Him. He’d been revealing Scriptures to her. Her eyes had been opened, just as had those of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The Scriptures became so clear and simple when Jesus showed her. What else had He said? She closed her eyes, burying herself deeper in the pillow, not wanting to leave that place where she’d been, wanting to hear more from her Lord.

He’d told her to go to Mayfair, not to be afraid to leave her present life and enter the Aguilar household. He’d said very clearly that it would be her wilderness, but that in obedience she would yield much fruit, for that family belonged to Him.

The last thing she remembered was awaking with a Scripture verse impressed upon her mind. She felt wrapped in the Lord’s love, confident that she could do all things in His strength.

Althea reached toward her bedside table and turned up the lamp. She saw it was just half-past three. In another hour, she would arise at her normal time. There was no sense in trying to get back to sleep. She had been waiting to hear from the Lord ever since she’d left Mr. Aguilar’s residence. She’d spent the intervening days in fasting and prayer, seeking the Lord’s direction. And now He had answered her. She had a keen sense of anticipation as she reached for her Bible. She wrapped herself in her shawl and sat against the pillow and bolster, the Bible against her knees.

She opened to the Book of Ephesians and rustled the pages to get to the second chapter. Her finger traveled down the page until it reached the fourteenth verse. That was the verse the Lord had given her.

“…who hath made us both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.”

Althea continued reading until she completed the chapter, then went back to the beginning and read the entire chapter through. Finally she sat back, her head lying against the pillow. There could be no doubt. The Lord was showing her that Jew and Gentile were considered one in His eyes, and that by His death and resurrection, He had created one new man out of both. She looked back down at the Scriptures, tracing the words with her fingertip as she reread them, feeling as if she were discovering them for the first time—and in a sense, she was:

“…to make in himself of twain one new man…that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby…through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father…ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints…built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone…unto an holy temple in the Lord….”

Paul was describing Jew and Gentile as a building fitly framed together as a temple of the Lord, as a habitation of His spirit. Althea sat still, stunned by the revelation. Her thoughts went to Simon Aguilar, a man cynical, impatient, arrogant, who clearly didn’t listen to anyone he considered inferior, and whom, quite frankly, she didn’t like.

Jesus loved this man and had died for him.

Chapter Two