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

“Go on,” George said, not understanding at all.


“You remember I told you we’d quarrelled?”


“It…The damnedest thing is that it wasn’t a quarrel at all, not really. It was just that something happened which rather put a barrier between us.” Matthew picked at a loose thread on the bedspread on which he sat. “When I was injured, that night before I was supposed to go on patrol with Captain Cottingham…Lord, I joked about it, didn’t I? I told you I’d caught a bullet in the leg, and it saved my life?” He looked unhappier than ever.


George nodded, pricklings of unease making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “You weren’t to know,” he said, leaning forward but hesitating to bridge the gap between them.


“Wasn’t I?” Matthew swallowed. “You see, the bullet in my leg…It came from my own gun.”


“Good God—you shot yourself?” Had he been wrong about Matthew after all?


But then why would Matthew tell him this? No, it couldn’t be. He’d trust Matthew with his life.


Chapter 51