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

I hope you’ll have a merry time without me. Will you take much time off work? I suppose it’ll depend on whether you have company. Still, I suppose even a hospital can be a jolly place at Christmas.


I’ll write again when I come back from Hampshire.


Mabel’s reply arrived just in time to reach him before he left, on Christmas Eve.


(Do you know, I’m getting quite used to calling you by your second name? I shall have dreadful trouble remembering what to call you, should you decide to become Roger once more.)


Chapter 35