Just Once Read Online Free PDF Page A

terrible gale that had blown it off course.
    “This was delivered when we docked. I’m sorry, but the purser forgot to give it to you.” He handed her a sealed letter.
    “Thank you,” she said absently, concentrating on the missive in her hand. As the captain departed, she handed Wheaton the umbrella. He held it over both of them while Jemma broke the wax seal and turned the page up to the streetlamp.
    “Oh, my God.” She closed her eyes, awed by the absolute power of prayer.
    “What is it, miss?” Wheaton was suspended in a half-hovering stance, as if he had been cast in bronze while waiting for direction.
    She had offered novenas to each and every saint the nuns had ever mentioned since the moment she had sworn to marry Alex Moreau. She had kept a votive candle burning in her room in Boston, an offering to St. Jude, the patron of hopeless causes. Aboard ship she had suspended the practice because of the danger of fire, but she continually prayed to all of her saints.
    Someone up there had worked a miracle.
    “This letter is from Henri Moreau. He regretfully states hat his grandson, Alex Moreau, was killed in a duel a month ago. He goes on to add that I am not to worry, that we are to proceed to the plantation where another grandson, the one who is now his heir, will marry me in Alex’s place.” She held out a separate piece of paper for him. “Here’s a map.”
    “Then let’s be off.”
    The letter crumpled as Jemma closed her fist around it and blinked away a sudden gust of mist that hit her lashes. It was a miracle. Alex Moreau had died before she could be forced to marry him. Now, in all good conscience, she could tell the Moreaus that the wedding was off. She had given her father a sworn oath that she would marry
Alex
Moreau, not his cousin. In her mind, the promise no longer stood.
    Before her, the carriage door stood open. The darkness inside loomed, as did her uncertain future. Wheaton stood beside the door, waiting patiently for her to climb aboard. Like a faithful retriever, he would stand there all night if need be.
    Her mind spinning, Jemma lifted her skirt and let Wheaton help her into the high-sprung vehicle. Once she was inside and the latch clicked with terrifying finality, she had a sobering thought.
    What if the Moreaus would not hear of calling off the wedding? Once she reached the plantation, they might force her to go through with it, and there would be no one to stand up for her. She glanced out the window at Wheaton, who continued to stand in the rain with a blank look on his face. No help from that quarter.
    After another three seconds of heart-palpitating panic, Jemma forced herself to think. It would be months before her father returned to Boston, then weeks before he could relocate to New Orleans. She had at least four months to do whatever she liked before he found out that the wedding had never even taken place.
    Balling her hands into fists, she pressed them against each other, held them to her lips, and closed her eyes tight. What would Grandpa Hall say?
    Do it, Jemma gal! Run!
    She whispered a hasty prayer to St. Thecla, a young girl who had called off her engagement so she could remain a virgin, and then had miraculously escaped death by fire, stood up to beasts, and dressed as a man to escape persecution. Faced with ravishment, Thecla was delivered to safety when the back of a cave opened and she disappeared. If anyone could help her in this hour of need, Thecla could.
    Suddenly the cathedral bells pealed the quarter hour. Jemma’s eyes flew open.
    “Wheaton!”
    “Miss?”
    “Before we go to the Moreaus’ I would like to stop at that cathedral across the square. During the storm at sea, I promised to light a candle and offer up a prayer just as soon as I reached dry land.”
    He shook his head. “I dunno. We’re late enough as it is—”
    “What’s a few minutes more? You won’t even have to climb down off the box. It won’t take me but a minute. Maybe