Read Chapter 13: Truce of Hope

The knock came at midnight, a frantic pounding against the field hospital’s makeshift door, and James was already on his feet, his revolver drawn before Élise could untangle herself from the blanket she’d draped over her shoulders.

“Stand back,” he ordered, but the door burst open before she could obey.

A boy—no more than sixteen, German gray still clinging to his shoulders—stumbled across the threshold. His hands were empty, raised high above his head, and his eyes were wild with the particular terror of someone who had crossed a line and knew there was no going back.

“Bitte,” he gasped. “Please. I have a letter.”

James lowered his revolver a fraction. “A letter from whom?”

The boy’s trembling fingers reached inside his tunic, producing a crumpled envelope stained with mud and something darker. Blood, perhaps. He held it out with the reverence of a holy relic.

“From a British soldier. He is prisoner. He said—he said if I bring this, you will not shoot me.”

Élise stepped forward, her blanket falling away, and took the envelope from the boy’s shaking hands. The paper was soft with damp, the ink smeared in places, but the handwriting on the front was clear enough.

*To the nurses of the British Expeditionary Force.*

She looked up at James. His jaw was tight, but he nodded once, holstering his revolver and gesturing for the boy to sit by the stove. Saint-Rémy’s rain hammered against the canvas walls, relentless as artillery.

Élise broke the seal.

The letter was brief. Three paragraphs, hastily written, the words squeezed together as if the author had known he might be silenced mid-sentence. She read it once, twice, three times before the meaning settled into her bones like cold water.

*Corporal Thomas Ashworth, 2nd Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment. Captured near Ypres, November 14th. Held at a work camp outside Lille. I am well-treated enough. I have made a friend among the stretcher bearers who carries our wounded from the line. His name is Pierre Moreau. He sends word to his sister, Élise. He does not know if she still lives. He says to tell her the poppies at Compiègne were the reddest he ever saw and that he hopes to see them again with her.*

Élise’s hands began to shake. The paper rattled between her fingers, and she had to set it down on the table to keep from tearing it.

“Élise?” James’s voice came from far away. “What does it say?”

She couldn’t speak. The words were still rearranging themselves in her mind, refusing to settle into something she could believe. Pierre. Stretcher bearer. *Alive.*

The Ministry of War had sent its letter. The official presumption of death. She had stood in the frozen dawn and wept for her brother’s soul. And all the while, he had been carrying wounded men across the same fields, his heart still beating, his hands still warm.

“He’s alive,” she whispered. “My brother is alive.”

James crossed to her in three strides, his hand closing over hers on the table. “Let me see.”

She released the letter and watched his eyes move across the page. When he finished, he was quiet for a long moment.

“This could be a trick,” he said finally. “A deserter carrying a letter that conveniently gives us hope. It’s a common tactic.”

“The handwriting is English. The regiment exists. Corporal Ashworth—I remember the name from the casualty lists. He was reported missing in November.”

“That doesn’t prove Pierre wrote it.”

Élise snatched the letter back, pressing it to her chest. “It proves he might be alive. That’s enough. That has to be enough.”

The German boy stirred by the stove, his young face hollow with hunger. “The bearer Pierre,” he said, his English thick and halting. “He is good man. He share his bread with our wounded. He talk always of his sister. Of the poppies.”

Élise turned to him, her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat. “He’s still at the camp? He’s still alive?”

“When I escape, yes. Two days past. He is weak but living.”

She rounded on James, the letter crumpled in her fist. “We have to do something. The camp is at Lille—that’s not far. If we contact headquarters, arrange an exchange, a raid…”

“Élise.” James’s voice was low, careful, the voice he used when he was about to deliver news she didn’t want to hear. “We are at war. We cannot mount a rescue for one man on the word of a German deserter who may be feeding us false information precisely so we divide our forces.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know this war takes everything it touches.” He stepped closer, and for a moment the professional distance between them collapsed. “I know I cannot lose you to a suicide mission chasing a ghost.”

The words hung in the air between them. The German boy had gone still, watching them with wary eyes. Somewhere outside, a distant shell landed, muffled by the rain.

“He’s not a ghost.” Élise’s voice cracked. “He’s my brother. The only family I have left. You don’t understand what that means.”

“Don’t I?” James’s hand came up to cup her face, and she froze at the tenderness in his touch. “I have lost everyone. My parents. My sister to fever when she was twelve. Every friend I made at university lies in a grave somewhere between here and the Channel. You are the only thing in this war that has made me feel like a man instead of a machine, and I cannot—I will not let you throw yourself into the fire for a hope that may cost you everything.”

“James…”

“I love you, Élise.”

The words came out raw, unpolished, stripped of every layer of British restraint. He looked as surprised to hear them as she was.

She should have felt warmth. Should have felt the bloom of joy she had imagined when she allowed herself to think of this moment in the dark hours of her vigil. But all she felt was ice.

Because love was the thing that got people killed. Love was the reason her mother had lingered at her father’s bedside until the fever took her too. Love was the reason she had survived Pierre’s death only by building walls around her heart, and now those walls were crumbling, and if she loved James, truly loved him, she would have something else to lose.

She stepped back. His hand fell to his side.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t do this. Not now. I need to find my brother—I need to believe something good can come from this. If I love you, and I lose you…”

“You are allowed to be happy.”

“I am allowed to grieve the living!” Her voice broke on the last word, and she saw him flinch.

Silence stretched between them. The rain continued its assault. The German boy pulled his knees to his chest and made himself small.

Finally, James nodded. Once. A soldier’s acknowledgment of an order he didn’t want to follow.

“I understand,” he said, and his voice was flat again, professional, the mask back in place. “We’ll wire headquarters about your brother. It’s all we can do from here.”

He turned and walked out into the rain, leaving the door swinging behind him.

Élise stood in the center of the hospital, the letter crumpled in her fist, and felt the twin weights of love and loss press down on her chest until she could barely breathe.

An hour later, Corporal Reeves burst through the door, his face streaming with water and something worse. “Orders from command. The Germans are massing northeast. We are to retreat to Arras by dawn.”

The truce was over.