Tracie Peterson by Bridal Blessings

Author:Bridal Blessings
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

MY VALENTINE

Chapter 1

January, 1835

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.

DEUTERONOMY 6:4

Darlene Lewy hurried to pull on warm woolen petticoats. It was a frosty January morning and living so close to the harbor waters of New York City, the Lewy house always seemed to be in a state of perpetual cold. Shivering and slipping a dark-blue work dress over her head, Darlene could hear her father in his ritual of morning prayers.

“Shema Israel, Adonai eloheinu Adonai echad,” he recited the Hebrew in his heavy German accent.

Darlene embraced the words to her heart. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” She smiled. For all of her years on earth she had awakened each morning to the sound of her father’s faithful prayers.

Humming to herself, Darlene sat down at her dressing table. Taking up a hairbrush, she gave her thick, curly tresses a well-needed brushing, then quickly braided and pinned it into a snug, neat bun on the top of her head. She eyed herself critically in the mirror for any escaping hairs. Dark-brown eyes stared back at her from beneath shapely black brows. She was no great beauty. At least not in the eyes of New York’s very snobbish social circle. But then again, she wouldn’t have been welcomed in that circle, even if she had have been ravishingly beautiful and wealthy to boot. No, the upper crust of New York would never have taken Darlene Lewy into its numbers, because Darlene was a Jewess.

Deciding she made a presentable picture, Darlene hurriedly made her bed and went to the kitchen to stoke up the fire and prepare breakfast. Her kitchen was a sorry little affair, but it served them well. Had her mother lived, perhaps they would have had a nicer house, instead of sharing the three-story building with her father’s tailoring shop and sewing rooms. But, had her mother and little brother survived childbirth, fifteen years earlier, Darlene had little doubt they’d still be living in Germany instead of America.

“Neshomeleh,” Abraham Lewy said, coming into the room. Darlene could not remember a time when he had not greeted her with the precious endearment, “my little soul.” “Good morning, Tateh, did you sleep well?” She gave him a kiss on his leathery cheek and pulled out a chair for him to sit on.

“It is well with me, and you?”

Darlene laughed. “I’m chilled to the bone, but not to worry. I’ve stoked up the fire and no doubt by the time we get downstairs to the shop, Hayyim will have the stove fires blazing and ready for the day.” Hayyim, her father’s assistant, was a local boy of seventeen who had pleaded to learn the tailoring business. And, since Abraham had no sons to carry on his tradition of exquisitely crafted suits, he had quickly taken Hayyim under his wing. Darlene knew that the fact Hayyim’s father and mother had died in a recent cholera epidemic had much to do with her father’s decision, but in truth, she saw it as an answer to prayer.

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