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

“So what do you say?” Phillips insisted.


“It’s awfully kind of you to ask me.” George was deeply touched by this invitation to share their celebrations, even though in all likelihood it’d be the sort of loud, alcohol-fuelled bun-fight he’d pay good money to avoid. “But I’ve been invited elsewhere. A friend’s asked me down to Hampshire to stay with his people.”


“Ah! Say no more about it, then.” Phillips sat back with a smile, just as Mitchell limped back through the door.


He gave them both suspicious glances. “I begin to think I’m the only member of staff actually doing any work,” he said before sitting back at his desk.


Phillips took off his spectacles, gave them a polish and put them back on again to peer closely at Mr. Mitchell. “So that’s what you call going downstairs to make eyes at Miss Pargeter, is it?”


Chapter 34