Charles Todd - A Bitter Truth

“The Street of Fishes.”

“Aye, well, I’m a sheep farmer, I can’t speak the language.”

I laughed. “You’re the canniest sheep farmer I know.”

“I should hope so. At any rate, the good Sister told me she would consider a proper request for Sophie to live in England, as long as she is taught about her parents and the nuns who protected her.”

We walked on. “I must write to Roger Ellis. He’s on his way back to France. He’ll have to see to it, and contact the solicitor.”

“As to that,” Sergeant Larimore said, more canary feathers drifting around his cheeky head, “I paid that gentleman a friendly call. Said I was best mates with this Ellis chap, and he’s willing to represent him.”

“Sergeant Larimore, you’re incorrigible!”

“Aren’t I just?” He shifted my valise to the other arm, and said, “Do you know the French think there’s a German spy in the bulrushes down along the river? I’ve been here for every ship landing, waiting for you. Only yesterday they sent another detachment of soldiers to scour the banks. If you hadn’t come soon, I was likely to be shot as a spy.”

I laughed.

But I had also noticed that he was wearing not the blue serge of the Base Hospital but his uniform.

“Are you healed?”

“Not completely,” he informed me. “But if you’re going back to the forward dressing station, I don’t see any point in lingering here. I’ll just get myself wounded again and you can save me this time. The Aborigines have a saying, you know. That if you save a man’s life, he’s yours as long as he lives.”

“I don’t believe a word of it. Besides, if it were true, you already belong to another nursing sister.”

He chuckled complacently, shortening his stride to match mine. “Ah, but it was the doctor who saved me that time. And he doesn’t count.”

CHARLES TODD is the New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries, the Bess Crawford mysteries, and one stand-alone novel. A mother-and-son writing team, they live in Delaware and North Carolina, respectively.