To Love a Traitor (9 page)

Chapter Ten

George lay on his bed, his insides all knotted up with guilt and shame. He’d gabbled something even he hadn’t understood and fairly bolted for the haven of his bedroom, locking the door behind him.

Matthew hadn’t knocked upon it. George wasn’t sure if he was glad or sorry. God, how could he have let the man kiss him like that, when he was supposed to be here to spy upon him? What if Matthew
had
been the man to betray Hugh to his death? Every instinct in George cried out against it—but what the hell did he know for sure?

And what the
hell
had Matthew been thinking of, embracing him in Mrs. Mac’s sitting room like that? Had the man no sense of self-preservation whatsoever? She or Miss Lewis could have walked in at any moment! Then they’d have been out on their ears, and lucky if she didn’t have the police on them. George felt sick to his stomach at the thought of going back to prison.

Or of Matthew going to gaol, either—which was pure idiocy, as wasn’t that what he was working towards, here, should the man prove to have betrayed his country?

Although, now he came to think of it, Miss Lewis had been working a late shift, and Mrs. Mac out visiting her sister, who was unwell. So perhaps Matthew’s actions hadn’t been so very reckless, after all… Good God. Could Matthew have planned it all? And if he had, what might have been his motives? Simple seduction—or the cold calculation of a spy?

No. No, it couldn’t be. Matthew had shown such sympathy towards him, such lack of condemnation on the heels of George’s shameful confession. Surely such a man was incapable of being so devious? His mind was whirling, a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts. That kiss had left him feverish, heady with the discovery that Matthew was a man of his own tastes. He hardly knew
what
to feel about it.

Unable to settle, George hauled himself back to his feet and paced. He wished—God, how he wished—that he had someone to talk to. If only Mabel were here. They’d never spoken of his romantic leanings towards men, Mabel and he, but he rather thought she knew. As a nurse, she was no sheltered young lady. She’d no more seen the horrors of war firsthand than he had, but she’d seen the wrecks of men who came back from the Front. She’d understand, he was sure.

Or would she? To Mabel, Matthew Connaught was no more than the man who might have betrayed her fiancé to his death. She knew nothing of his ready smile, his open manner…

Damn it. George flung himself into his desk chair and took up his pen.

Dear Mabel,

This is a wretched business. I’m not sure how much longer I can stick it. The closer Mat—

George caught himself, and managed to obliterate his slip with an ink blot.

—Connaught and I become, the less I’m able to believe him capable of treachery. He’s a decent chap, I’m sure of it—honest and open, and with such feeling and compassion.

After those first few desperate sentences, George paused, his head clearing a little.

I know you’d say that of
course
a spy would seem honest and
guileless, or he wouldn’t be doing his job properly. But I really find it hard to imagine the man cold-bloodedly condemning to death those who counted him a comrade in arms. Isn’t it possible that Hugh’s luck simply ran out?

Again he paused. God, it should be Mabel here, doing this. She’d always been the braver one, and the more determined. She’d even thought of volunteering to go out to France to work in one of the field hospitals there, but had bowed to her mother’s no doubt desperate pleas to stay in safety. George had never been so thankful in his life as when her letter had reached him in prison to let him know she wasn’t going into danger.

God, and here he was, balking at the first sign of unpleasantness. Not even that—if he was brutally honest with himself, Matthew’s kiss had been anything
but
unpleasant.

He couldn’t let Mabel down.

Don’t worry. I
will
stick it out. I feel better already, for having got all that off my chest. After all, what harm am I doing really? Merely befriending a man, and persuading him to share some of his experiences at the Front. If he’s innocent of any foul play in the matter, he need never find out I had any motive other than curiosity and fellow-feeling.

All well and good, but Matthew had made it clear he had more than friendship on his mind. A nasty, bitter voice in George’s mind whispered how much easier it might be to persuade Matthew to talk, if they were lovers.

No. A thousand times no. George didn’t care what the man had done—or rather, he cared very much, but whatever it was, posing as a lover was out of the question. If (please God) Matthew was innocent, it would be an unforgiveable breach of trust. And if he weren’t…

George felt sick to his stomach at the very thought of lying down with his brother’s killer.

No, there was only one thing to do—redouble his efforts to find out just what had really happened at the Front. George read the letter through once more, more than half decided to crumple it into a ball and throw it on the fire.

Then he thought,
to hell with it
, appended his name and quickly addressed an envelope.

Chapter Eleven

If George’s conscience had pricked him the night before, it fairly bayoneted him on seeing Matthew’s face at the breakfast table next morning. There were dark circles under Matthew’s eyes, and his customary good cheer even first thing in the morning was conspicuously absent.

“You’ll be coming down with something,” Mrs. Mac said with grim satisfaction. “And Lord help us all if it’s the influenza again.”

At that, Matthew forced a smile—a poor approximation of his usual cheery beam. “Not a bit of it, Mrs. Mac. I simply didn’t sleep well last night. I’ll be right as rain after I’ve eaten.” At no time did he meet George’s eye.

George knew damn well what would’ve kept
him
awake in Matthew’s position. To make overtures to a man who wasn’t amenable… Well. It rarely ended well. As it happened, he hadn’t slept at all well himself, but he made certain to be more than usually solicitous in passing the butter and jam. He was rewarded by a gradual lessening of the defiant tension in Matthew’s face and figure as they ate.

“Do you have a moment?” George asked brusquely as they rose from the table. “I—there’s something I’d like you to take a look at. In my room.” His face prickled with heat, his mind having with appallingly bad timing reminded him just how that would usually be construed between men of their sort.

Matthew looked startled, but nodded and followed him up the stairs to his room.

Having closed the door behind them, George wondered what in God’s name he was going to say. But he had to say something, and soon, or they’d both be unconscionably late for work. “Look… About last night. What was said.” And done, but even behind a closed door he shied from mentioning it explicitly.

Matthew took a step forward, then halted. “Go on.”

“I…” George found himself running a hand through his hair. Damn it, now he’d have to get the comb out again. “I’m doing this awfully badly. I just wanted to say you needn’t worry. You—you startled me, that was all. I wasn’t expecting…that.”

Matthew drew in a deep breath and let it out with a long sigh. “Thank you. You’ve no idea what a beastly night I spent worrying about it. I say, you needn’t fear it’ll be repeated. Put it down to…to the relief at getting Marmaduke back safe and sound.” He gave George a shame-faced look. “Still friends, then?”

Was it really this easy?

And why did George’s stomach feel hollow with disappointment? “Friends,” he confirmed and nodded.

Matthew smiled—that sunny, boyish smile George had become so used to. “I’m so glad. Now, let us put on our hats and coats and scurry down to the Tube post haste, or we’ll be in the doghouse with our lords and masters—not to mention Price, who’ll be wanting in to make the beds.”

George forced a laugh. “Yes, we mustn’t get on her bad side, or who knows what horrors we’ll have to deal with.”

“Grates not swept properly. Sheets left only half-tucked… You know, if
I
were a maid, I’d come up with better forms of revenge than that on annoying members of the household. Leaky hot water bottles in the beds so you’d think you’d had a rather childish accident, perhaps, or a dead mouse under a loose floorboard, so you’d drive yourself mad trying to work out where the smell was coming from…” Matthew chattered gaily on as they hastened to the Hampstead Tube.

All was as it was before.

Except that George felt, if anything, even more wretched about the deception he was practising.

George’s low spirits followed him into the office and did not go unnoticed by his fellow workers.

Phillips, in particular, devoted some little time to an attempt to elicit a confidence. “A problem shared is a problem halved, my mum always used to say, God rest her.”

Mitchell put down his pen. “Good Lord. You mean to tell me you actually believe in God? I thought all your lot were diehard atheists.”

“That’s as may be, but my mum was a church-going woman, and so I say, God rest her. And I’ll thank you, Mr. Mitchell, not to gainsay it.”

“Wouldn’t for the world. Lord knows the poor woman must deserve a good rest now, after no doubt many trials in life.” His significant look made quite clear his opinion of where those trials had originated.

Phillips gave a raucous cackle, then turned back to George. “You’ve got a face on you like a horse what’s on its way to the knackers’ yard. Come on, out with it. We’re all comrades here.”

Mitchell
tsked
loudly.

“Friends, then, Mr. Mitchell. You don’t have any objection to the bonds of friendship, I hope?”

“As long as they’re not couched in the language of the Bolshevist, no. But for God’s sake, don’t pester the poor man. It’s not entirely unreasonable that he should wish his private woes to stay just that.”

“Really,” George broke in, “it’s nothing important.”

Two faces turned to look at him. Like the walls of Jericho, George crumbled under the concerted onslaught. He could hardly mention the real reason for his dejection, but… “One of the fellows I live with… He was a lieutenant in the war. Lost an arm at Passchendaele. Well, it came out last night that I was a C.O. That’s all.” George stanched the flow of words and gave an embarrassed laugh. “He didn’t even take it badly.”

Mitchell stared. “Then what on earth are you worried about, man?” He returned to his work, clearly disappointed by this anticlimax.

Phillips, however, nodded wisely. “Not so much what he
said
, is it? You’re thinking to yourself, aren’t you, does he see me in a different light to the one he saw me in yesterday?”

Was he? George supposed he was, although not at all in the way Phillips meant it.

Except…the way his words had tumbled over one another in their eagerness to be out just now was beginning to make him suspect he hadn’t known his own mind as well as he’d thought.

“What you’ve got to think on,” Phillips continued, “is, this is when you find out who’s your friend and who isn’t. True friends, that is, not just some fellow what thinks you’re a good man to have a pint with. A
true
friend, whatever his own position may be on the subject, is one who’ll allow that opinions differ, and will respect you and your opinion both.” This last seemed directed rather pointedly, although good-naturedly, in Mr. Mitchell’s direction.

That gentleman merely
hmphed
under his breath.

“I… Ah, yes. I’m sure you’re right. But I’d better get these files back to Mr. Whittaker,” George said, anxious to close the subject.

That evening after supper, still troubled, George excused himself to go upstairs and study his books. He was roused from a somewhat disconcerting reading of a commentary upon the Labouchere amendment by a rap at his door.

“Come in,” he called, turning.

Matthew’s face appeared, looking a trifle sheepish. George hastily closed his book.

“Don’t let me disturb you if you’re busy,” Matthew said quickly. “I just wanted to be certain there was, well, no hard feeling between us.”

“No, of course not.” George berated himself. Conversation over supper
had
been a little stilted due to George’s internal wrangles—he should have realised what construction Matthew would put upon his taciturnity. “Come in and sit down. I could do with a break in any case.”

Matthew’s smile was bright with relief as he slipped into the room. “So what is it tonight? Wills? Criminals? Criminal wills?”

George laughed. “I’m not certain there is such a thing as a criminal will. Although I’m sure there are plenty of unjust ones. No, just reading around the subject. It’s terribly easy to get distracted—one looks up a case, which references another case, so you look up that one too, and so on until you’ve quite forgotten what you were originally after.”

“I’m not sure I could stick all the studying you do. I don’t think there’s space in my brain for all the knowledge you seem able to cram into yours. And I see you’re a great reader even when you don’t have to be.” Matthew ran his fingers along the spines of George’s books, lined up on the small shelf by the bed. George had a great many more books at his parents’ house, of course, but these were the ones he couldn’t bear to leave behind.

George shrugged, a little self-conscious. “I’ve always loved books. And they saved me, you know, when I was…in prison.” He watched Matthew’s face, but there was no visible disgust at this open mention of his conscientious objecting. “Well, after the first few weeks, when I wasn’t allowed anything to stave off the boredom.” They’d been a desolate few weeks. He didn’t like to recall them.

“And in several languages too. Now, admit it, you don’t read at all; you merely keep them around to impress gullible idiots like me.”

George couldn’t help smiling. “Most of them I’ve read more times than I’d care to remember, actually. Go on; ask me anything about them if you don’t believe me.”

“Which, of course, is a perfectly safe offer to make, if I haven’t read them myself. You could make up any old thing, and I’d be none the wiser. Ah, but you don’t know everything about me. For instance, here’s Mann’s
Tod in Venedig
. This one, I
have
read. Rather sad, isn’t it? Did you read German at university? Where did you go, by the way, I’ve been meaning to ask. For some reason, I’ve had you pegged as a Cambridge man, but I couldn’t for the life of me say why.”

“You understand German?” George vaguely registered that he was being rather rude, ignoring Matthew’s questions, but was too unsettled by the implications of Matthew’s knowledge of German to care.

“Oh yes. All Mother’s fault. She’s half-Swiss, you see, and Großmutter came to live with us shortly after I’d turned one. She’d just been widowed, poor woman. And although she’d lived in England for twenty years or more, she’d never managed to lose her accent. While Mother naturally didn’t want to stop her spending time with her only grandchild—my sister and brothers having not yet put in an appearance, of course—she was awfully worried I’d end up
speekink ze Englisch like zees
”—here, Matthew put on an outrageously impenetrable Teutonic accent—“so with a stroke of genius, she suggested to Großmutter that it would be an excellent idea if she were to speak only German to me, so that I’d take in both tongues with my milk, as it were.”

It was plausible, no doubt about it. Perhaps it was even true.

But George couldn’t help wishing Matthew’s grandmother had been of any other nationality than a German-speaking one. Knowledge of the language had, of course, been vital for George’s work at the Admiralty.

It was also a rather essential requisite, he imagined, for a German spy.

“It was almost the death of me, though,” Matthew went on idly, apparently oblivious to George’s discomfort.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Speaking German. Nearly did for me, during the war. Should have done, by rights. I was supposed to go on a patrol, but I had the most beastly luck—or the most marvellous luck, I suppose I should say, as it turned out—and took a bullet the night before. Another man went in my place.”

“And he died?” George’s heart was pounding. He’d imagined he’d have to bring the conversation round to that incident by slow degrees. To have Matthew bring up the subject of his own accord was either an incredible stroke of luck—or deeply suspicious.

“They all did. All three of them. Private Roberts, Corporal Wilson and Captain Cottingham.”

George hoped his jolt at the name hadn’t been visible. It was absurd—he’d known, after all, that it was coming. Somehow that had seemed to make it worse.

“All jolly decent chaps,” Matthew continued, “and they were cut down within minutes of leaving our lines.” He stared out of the window. “I wrote to Wilson’s widow with my condolences. Didn’t quite have the heart to tell her it should have been me, not him.”

“Why were you to have gone on the patrol?” George managed to stop himself from preceding it with
I’ve always wondered
. “Was it normal to have two officers along like that?”

“Well, as I said,
mein Deutsch ist ja ziemlich gut
. And the whole point was to listen in on old Jerry and find out what he was up to. Poor old Cottingham—buckets of courage, but not such a dab hand with the German.” Matthew gave a strained smile. “Apparently, his younger brother would have been just the ticket, but we just had to make do.”

George swallowed. “Did… Did Captain C-Cottingham speak much about his family?”

Matthew sent him a startled look. “Well, as much as we all did, I suppose. The brother was a civil servant, I believe—some kind of reserved occupation, at any rate. I know the captain was jolly glad he was out of it all. As any brother would have been.”

He was? George had always thought… Despite Mabel’s claims, he’d thought Hugh had died despising him for a coward.

Mabel’s reply to his letter arrived a couple of days later.

Dearest George

(It does feel strange writing that.)

Chin up. Of course you feel badly about deceiving the people you live with. What decent man wouldn’t? But remember, it’s in a just cause. And as you say, if he’s innocent, Mr. Connaught need never know anything about it. You’ll move on to other lodgings, and he’ll remember you as that pleasant young chap he used to share digs with.

George stifled a bitter laugh. It was sound advice—to a man who would be happy to leave Matthew Connaught far behind him. Unfortunately for him, George wasn’t that man.

He was beginning to realise just how much he hoped Matthew was innocent. And how much it had shaken him to discover Matthew’s knowledge of German. But damn it, if simply speaking the language were enough to convict a man, George himself should have faced a firing squad long ago.

Heartened by this thought, he continued reading.

I’ve been to see Pip Wharton, by the way. Poor man—he seemed extraordinarily glad to see me. I’m sure his parents do their best, but I don’t think they understand just how important it is for a young man to be around people his own age. His mother, in particular, seems determined to coddle him to within an inch of his life. Would you believe he hadn’t been out of the house since the summer? As if a breath of fresh autumn air would be the death of a man who’s survived the trenches! I’m glad to say I’ve put an end to all that nonsense. I’m sure you’d have been proud of me. I drew myself up to my full height and made believe I was Matron scolding some poor trainee. “This young man,” I said firmly, “needs fresh air and exercise, not to be mouldering away in a dark room like a piece of antique furniture no one likes very much.” And then I wheeled him outdoors without another word. We did laugh when we were out in the garden, the sun on our faces, although it was rather chilly. Have you had snow in London? We’ve had a scattering, and the hills and woods are astonishingly pretty.