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

Fortunately, his knock was answered by a tousle-headed Matthew, who beamed at George as if his arrival had made the day complete. “Come in, come in! I was hoping you’d be here early. Need a hand with anything? Mrs. Mac and Miss Lewis are still at church, but they should be back within the hour.”


George found himself smiling back at the man without any great effort on his part. “I’m relieved to find you in, then. I did wonder if that’d turn out to be the one drawback of this place—being forced out of bed to go to church on pain of no Sunday dinner!” From the enticing aroma of roasting meat that suffused the house, it might even be a sacrifice worth making.


Chapter 14