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

It wasn’t until he stood at the mirror, tying his bow tie, that it occurred to him this, surely, was something Matthew couldn’t possibly manage alone. And indeed, when he turned, he found Matthew waiting for him, tie loose around his collar. “Sorry to trouble you, but I don’t suppose you could tie this for me? I can manage perfectly well with a normal tie—I just don’t bother to unknot them at the end of the day—but I’m afraid this little beastie is beyond me.”


“I shall be glad to help,” George assured him, stepping closer—and only then realising he hadn’t the foggiest idea how to tie the thing from the front. He wasn’t sure, when he thought about it, that he really knew how a bow tie went—his handsknew what to do, but his brain had long since forgotten the intricacies of it all. He stood there with the ends in his hands, wondering what on earth to do with them.


Chapter 38