The Last Broken Promise by Grace Walton Read Free Book Online

was the only symbol of luxury. It had been willed to St Cecelia’s by a wealthy planter’s wife. Tobacco to sell would have been more practical, even a cow would have been nice. But no, the convent had gotten the old woman’s cast-off mirror.
    Not even framed, it hung by a length of twine fastened in some way to its back. Someone, a long time ago, had nailed the small oval mirror on the whitewashed wall of the room. As she stood there, Jess frowned at her wavy reflection. She’d spent the last fifteen minutes fighting with the taffy-colored hair that refused to stay neatly tucked under her wimple. All her brothers refused to let her cut the curly mess. Though she secretly swore if she ever found them all gone from home at the same time, she’d take a pair of scissors to the thick unruly mass. But that never happened. Her brothers had some kind of paternal agreement between the three of them. She wasn’t quite sure what it entailed. They were all older than she. Consequently, they acted like a trio of fathers. Most girls only had to put up with one guardian, Jess had three. This past year was the first time in her life that one of the blasted St John brothers wasn’t with her, at all times. Dylan was the sternest, because he was the oldest. Connor was the most fun. And Griffin, well… the less said about him the better. In the mirror, she watched her wimple slide perilously to one side of her head. “Blast, blast, blast,” she whispered softly.
    “Speech like that and you’re wanting to be a nun, girlie?” There was a chuckle in the rich Irish brogue. Dorcas Moore sat on her narrow bed in the sparsely furnished room, she shared with her niece. “I’m thinking you’ll never make a nun, if you don’t stop all that heathen cursing.”
    Jessamine jammed the last lock under the tight band, straightened the wimple, and then turned triumphantly to face her aunt. “I absolutely will be a nun.”
    The plump gray-headed woman rolled her eyes. “So you’ve told me. At least daily this whole last year. I’d like to get a hold of that rascally brother of yours, and that’s the God’s truth.”
    “Which rascally brother would that be, Aunt Dorcas?” teased the girl as she plopped down on her own bed across the room.
    “Connor, of course.” The old woman frowned. “Though you’ve a wealth of rascals for brothers, that’s the God’s own truth. What in the name of all that’s holy possessed the man to put you in a nunnery?” She had been asking that question, or one very like it, for the whole year they’d been at the convent. “In my day, a girl had to do something really scandalous to be put away, mind you. Really scandalous.”
    “Like sailing on a pirate’s ship?” Jessamine rolled over. The girl stared up at the watermarked ceiling. She might as well humor her aunt. Because Jess couldn’t actually give a rational explanation for why she was here. And it wasn’t Connor’s fault. No, she’d begged and wheedled until he’d been forced to relent. He hadn’t understood either. No one had. Try as she might, there was no explaining her reason for being here. Lord knows, she’d spent a perfectly good year trying to make Aunt Dorcas understand, without any success.
    “Pish, posh.” Dorcas sniffed in dismissal. “Are you talking about that wee holiday you took with your brother Griffin? That was not even mischievous. Besides, going on his boat was family business. And he’s got a license, dear. That makes him a privateer, not a pirate,” she said primly.
    “Ship, Aunt, ship,” Jessamine corrected absently. Those marks up on the ceiling were beginning to take on a shape. “You know how Griffin hates for you to call it a boat.”
    “Boat, ship, who cares? I’ll call it whatever I like. He’s not here, and he’s got too much arrogance as it is. Someone needs to take him down a peg or two. It comes from looking like he does and being so big. My sister Mariah was a normal sized woman, mind you. Why