World leaders gather in Versailles to negotiate an end to the Great War, and in this 11th outing (after A Forgotten Place), Sister Bess Crawford is asked to carry out a personal mission in Paris for a Matron. When Bess finds Lawrence Minton, this intelligent, ambitious officer has become a bitter and disturbed man addicted to opiates. Bent on suicide, Minton flees, and Bess must race to unlock the trauma of his past before he succeeds. Reluctant to trust an officer in the missing soldier's regiment—a man with secrets of his own—and uncertain of the loyalties of the Matron's friends in Paris, Bess must rely on her own instincts and experience—and sometimes in desperation on a stranger who claims he never met Minton.