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

“But he would have enlisted,” Miss Lewis put in earnestly. “If it hadn’t been for his ears, he’d have signed up straight away. He gets a terrible ringing in them sometimes.”


“And dizzy spells,” Watkins reminded her, although he looked a little shame-faced about it. “If it hadn’t been for that…But it was very important work I was doing. The country has to be kept moving, ‘specially in times of war.”


“I dare say, if Tom had been able to go out to fight, it would have all been sorted in half the time,” Miss Lewis said, her loyalty, at least, commendable.


“You’re a silly girl,” her swain replied, his tone affectionate even if his words were not. “What do you know about wars?”


“I read the newspapers, you know,” she said indignantly.


“Oh, the newspapers. As if there was a grain of truth in anything theyprint.”


And they were off again on the same, well-worn track. “Fancy a stroll, Matthew?” George asked desperately.


Matthew beamed. “Excellent idea. Coming, Miss Lewis, Mr. Watkins?”


Chapter 20