Read Chapter 10: A Winter of Frost

The frost came early that year, painting the ruined fields in brittle white. By Christmas Eve, the mobile hospital had settled into a rhythm of sorts—a brutal, tireless rhythm that left little room for reflection. But the guns had fallen strangely quiet along this stretch of the line, and the silence felt heavier than any bombardment.

Élise stood at the entrance of the barn they had converted into a ward, watching her breath plume in the cold air. The wounded inside were fewer tonight, a lull she distrusted. Behind her, a young soldier with a bandaged head hummed a carol softly, missing every third note. She turned and smiled at him, and he blushed beneath his bandages.

James appeared beside her, his coat collar turned up against the chill. He held a small, misshapen bundle wrapped in oilcloth.

“I found this in a supply crate,” he said, unwrapping it to reveal a bottle of cognac and a tin of biscuits, one side dented. “Not exactly a feast, but the Quartermaster has his moments of charity.”

“You stole that,” Élise said, a smile tugging at her mouth.

“Borrowed,” he corrected. “I intend to return the bottle. Eventually. Perhaps in the spring.” He gestured toward the ward. “The men need something. A few hours of forgetting. I thought we might arrange a small celebration. Nothing grand. A fire, some music, whatever warmth we can manage.”

She looked at him, at the exhaustion shadowing his eyes, and nodded. “I have a jar of jam I’ve been saving. And the padre left a crate of candles, though he may have intended them for the chapel.”

“The chapel can spare them,” James said firmly. “God will understand.”

They set to work in silence, a partnership that had grown comfortable in the chaos. Élise gathered the candles and placed them along the rough wooden beams, their flames casting dancing shadows across the faces of the wounded. James coaxed a reluctant fire in the iron stove, feeding it splintered crates and dry kindling. The men watched with the dulled curiosity of the battered, and when a tenor among them began to sing—a Belgian soldier with a voice far too pure for the mud he’d crawled through—the others joined in, their voices rough and ragged but earnest.

Élise stood at the back, listening, and felt the ache of remembrance tighten in her chest. Christmas at the farm—the smell of roasting chestnuts, her father’s laughter, Pierre sneaking her sips of cider when their mother wasn’t looking. She closed her eyes, and the image dissolved into the flicker of candlelight.

James appeared at her side, pressing a tin cup into her hand. The cognac burned warm going down.

“You’re thinking of him,” he said quietly.

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Every day. But tonight it feels sharper.”

He nodded, not offering empty comfort. “My mother used to leave an empty chair at the table for William. After he died at Mons, she set another one. For the ghost she hoped would come home.” He paused. “It’s hard, carrying the dead into the light.”

Élise looked at him, at the lines around his eyes that had deepened in the months they’d worked together. “You know what I carry, James. You’re the only one who does.”

He turned to face her fully. The firelight caught the gold in his hair, the faint stubble along his jaw. “I wish—” He stopped, shook his head. “There’s a great deal I wish, Élise. More every day.”

She felt the weight of his words, the careful restraint holding them together. The ward behind them hummed with quiet conversation, a soldier’s thin laugh, the crackle of the stove. In the gap between heartbeats, he lifted her hand—gloved, cold—and pressed his lips to the knuckles. A gesture so old-fashioned it felt sacred.

Élise’s breath caught. She did not pull away, but the memory of Pierre rose unbidden, sharp as the frost. Her brother’s face, grinning at her across the dinner table, telling her not to worry, that he’d be home by Christmas.

It was Christmas.

“James,” she whispered, and her voice cracked. She lowered her hand, tucking it against her chest. “I can’t—not yet. Not while he might still be out there.”

James’s eyes softened with understanding, though a shadow of hurt flickered through them. “I know. I’m not asking for anything you can’t give.” He hesitated. “But I wrote to a friend in the War Office. About Pierre. He’s thorough, discreet. If there’s news to be found, he’ll find it.”

Her throat tightened. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” He stepped back, gesturing toward the small gathering. “Tonight, we’re meant to be merry. Let’s at least try to honor the attempt.”

She managed a smile, and they returned to the circle of wounded men. The Belgian tenor began another carol, and Élise sang along, her voice steady even as her heart twisted. She kept her hand near her side, still warm where his lips had pressed against it.

The night stretched on. The cognac bottle emptied. Soldiers spoke of home in low, reverent tones, sharing photographs and stolen trinkets. A French lieutenant produced a battered harmonica and played a tune Élise remembered from village dances. For a few hours, the war was a distant rumble, a half-forgotten nightmare.

It was near dawn when the orderly—that same sharp-eyed man who had noted her hesitation months ago—came to the ward with a letter in his hand. He held it out with an expression she couldn’t read.

“For you, Sister. From the Ministry of War.”

The ward fell silent. Élise took the envelope, her fingers trembling. The seal was official, the paper thick and impersonal. She knew before she opened it. She had known, she realized, for months. But knowing and feeling were different things.

She read the words twice, the careful bureaucratic language that reduced a life to a single line. *Presumed dead. Killed in action, presumed dead, date uncertain, near the Meuse.*

Somewhere inside her, a door closed with a sound she felt in her bones.

She looked up. James was watching her, his face pale, already rising from where he sat. But she couldn’t speak. The letter slipped from her fingers, and she turned and walked out into the frost-sharpened dark, the silence of the dawn broken only by the lonely cry of a bird in the frozen fields.

Behind her, the orderlies exchanged glances. The suspicious one bent to retrieve the fallen letter, reading it with quick eyes before setting it on a cot.

James followed her into the dark, calling her name.

But Élise walked on, into the white world, carrying the weight of a grief that had finally found its name.