Wounds of the heart are the hardest to heal. Solicitor’s clerk George Johnson has a secret goal when he moves into a London boarding house in the winter of 1920: to find out if his fellow lodger, Matthew Connaught, was the wartime traitor who cost George’s adored older brother Hugh his life. Yet the more he gets to know his quarry, the more George loses sight of his mission -- and his heart. Blessed with boyish good looks and charm in abundance, ad man Matthew is irrepressibly cheerful despite having lost an arm in the Great War -- and soon makes plain his attraction to George. As George’s feelings for Matthew grow, so does his desperation to know the truth about what happened that day in Ypres. Even if bringing all their secrets to light means he’ll lose the man he’s come to love.

To Love a Traitor

Then had come the dreadful news from the Front. Mabel had thrown herself into her nursing and kept at it ever since, refusing to give up her work even when the Armistice came. Roger…Roger had carried on as he was, telling himself he was doing valuable work in the Admiralty. Trying to push aside the guilt and shame he felt at not having been out there in Hugh’s place.


Roger spent much of his time reading, those few months after calling on Sir Arthur. He’d hide himself away in his room, sitting on the wide, low sill of his window with a book as he had as a child. When he raised his head from his book, he could look out at the trees in their rich autumn clothing—but now there was no chance of spying a glimpse of Hugh and his friends, swaggering back from the hunt or larking about in the leaves.


Chapter 7