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

Unable to settle, George hauled himself back to his feet and paced. He wished—God, how he wished—he had someone to talk to. If only Mabel were here. They’d never spoken of his romantic leanings towards men, Mabel and he, but he rather thought she knew. As a nurse, she was no sheltered young lady. She’d no more seen the horrors of war firsthand than he had, but she’d seen the wrecks of men who came back from the Front. She’d understand, he was sure.


Or would she? To Mabel, Matthew Connaught was no more than the man who might have betrayed her fiancé to his death. She knew nothing of his ready smile, his open manner…


Damn it. George flung himself into his desk chair and took up his pen.


This is a wretched business. I’m not sure how much longer I can stick it. The closer Mat—


George caught himself, and managed to obliterate his slip with an ink blot.


Chapter 29