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

George stifled a gasp. Damn the man, for putting things down so openly in a letter anyone might have found and read. He glanced at Matthew. “Are you all right?”


“Not…not really. I wish…Lord, but it’s too late now for wishes, isn’t it?”


“Do you want to leave the rest of the letter until you’re feeling more up to it?”


“No.” Matthew turned the page with a decisive air, although the paper shook in his hands. “Let’s get it all over and done with.”


I’m not sorry I shot you. I’d do it again, if it was to save your life. I am sorry for those poor fellows who died in no-man’s-land. That was the first time I knew I’d killed someone.


George felt sick. Those poor fellows…Hugh. Hugh, and the men who’d gone with him.


“That’s it, then,” Matthew said, his voice oddly flat. “That’s it. That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?”


Chapter 57