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

“Yes—you see, sir?” Roger asked eagerly. “It’s just the sort of thing a man might do if he knewthe fellows who went on that patrol were going to be gunned down.”


Sir Arthur huffed. “I don’t like it, though. Not as proof he was a traitor. Man might just have got himself into a blue funk about the whole thing. Then again, I suppose, if the injury was self-inflicted, why not go the whole hog and give himself a Blighty one?”


Roger nodded, pleased to find Sir Arthur seemed to share his views on the matter. “Because if he waspassing information to the enemy, he’d want to stay out there at the Front.”


“Or, of course, it may be that it was simply an accident, and he was covering for one of the men—wounding a superior officer, even by accident, is a damned serious matter.”


Oh. Perhaps Sir Arthur wasn’t as convinced as Roger had thought. Roger’s face must have fallen at the thought, because Sir Arthur looked at him and gave a dry, wheezy chuckle.


Chapter 11