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

George would have to tell Matthew about being a C.O. at least. Would have to admit to his cowardice. And it was too soon…far too soon. That confession should have waited—indefinitely, for preference, despite what Sheila had said, but at any rate, until he was on a firmer footing with Matthew. Now, though, there was a good chance Matthew would simply decide George wasn’t, after all, the sort of fellow he wanted to become friends with.


“George?” Matthew called again. “Please open the door.”


Bowing to the inevitable, George trudged to the door. If Matthew rejected him now—and he would—it was no more than George deserved in any case.


But when George opened the door, Matthew’s attitude seemed neither suspicious, nor hostile. If anything, he seemed glad to see George once more. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” he began, to George’s utter astonishment. “That was incredibly thoughtless of me—going off about the war like that.”


George stared, unable for a moment to speak.


Chapter 18