Prologue

25 July 1944

Dear Jez,

Today is your fourth birthday, my precious little boy, and if your grandma and granddad were still with us, we’d have cake and presents and games. Sadly, our cousin doesn’t believe in celebrating the occasion. This is my fault, I’m afraid, since your father and I never married.

I want to tell you about him, because if anything should happen to me, I know Agatha will say nothing except vile things about him.

It was wartime—it still is, and how sad that this is all you’ve known your entire life. We all did things we mightn’t normally, but I don’t regret the time I spent with your father, because it gave me you.

In October of 1939, I was working in a little hotel in The Shambles when he walked through the door.

He was a nice man, sweetheart, although he was so sad. You don’t look like him—your hair is darker than his, although until just recently you were quite blond—but you have his lovely brown eyes. I wish I had a picture to show you, but all I can tell you is his name—Ivor Rivers.

I always loved the name Jeremy, that’s how you came to be Jeremy Ivor Tanner.

Ivor had returned to London by the time I discovered I was expecting you. Agatha had taken me in, because your granddad and her mother were brother and sister. I’ve tried to shield you from her harsh beliefs as much as I can, but I’m afraid you’ll discover this as you grow older. What I hope you’ll do is let her words wash over you. Give her respect, because she’s your elder and family, but keep your heart and your mind open and find your own beliefs.

I’ll keep this short in hopes to add more to it, and conceal it under the insole of your little shoe.

I love you, my sweet Jez. You’ve made these past four years bearable.

Happy birthday. Xxxx

Love,

Mummy

She never did add to that brief letter. A short time afterward I found her at the bottom of the stairs, blood pooling under her head. That was when I learned not to cry—it didn’t do any good

A couple of big men came and took Mum away. That was also when I learned praying did even less good. I never saw her again.

At church a few days later, in a pew that gave me an unobstructed view of the big wooden box in front of the altar, I kept shifting from one foot to the other. Something in my shoe made it very uncomfortable. Cousin Agatha grabbed my hand and squeezed so tight she hurt my fingers.

“Stand still,” she hissed at me.

When we returned to the third floor flat Mum and I shared with her, I went to what was now my room—so tiny it could barely hold Mum’s bed and my cot—and removed my shoe. That was when I found the letter. I couldn’t read script, but I recognised my name and Mummy. The last thing I would do was show it to the Old Bat, so I hid the letter.

It was a good thing, because the next day she came into my room.

“Give me those shoes. You’ve outgrown them, and I won’t have you shame me by fidgeting in church.”

I handed her the shoes.

Eleven years later, when she threw me out, she was pleased that I took with me the Bible Mum had said belonged to Grandma.

Little did the Old Bat know that was where I’d hidden Mum’s letter. 1

James Trevalyan was a handsome man of average height, but that was the only thing average about him. He had auburn hair that even cut short was a mass of curls, and green eyes that rivalled emeralds, and a velvet voice that…

Really not the thing, you stupid git,I admonished myself. One should not wax eloquent about the looks of the man one works for.

It wasn’t in my files, any of them, that I liked men even more than I liked women. As unfortunate as it might be, if a bloke’s mates learned he didn’t mind a bit of back scuttle, he’d quickly find himself without any mates at all, and quite possibly without backup as well when the shit hit the fan.

So once I’d known the path my future would take and had decided to become a Royal Marine, I’d determined to put those experiences behind me, buried those feelings deep inside. No pun intended.

My sole lapse had been when I was nineteen and on leave and met that toff with the sad, sad eyes…

I’d been inexplicably drawn to him—

Or perhaps it wasn’t so inexplicable. No one had ever needed me the way he seemed to, and so I let him take me to a hotel room where I went down on him, made love to him with all the expertise at my command, and then lay beside him after he fell asleep. I couldn’t sleep, though. Why would an obvious toff come to a pub like the Poodle and the Panther?

He’d almost seemed willing to challenge the two toughs, but they’d have made mincemeat out of him, which was why I’d stepped in. What could make a man willing to do that?

Before I came to any conclusions, I started to become drowsy. I’d never spent the night with a bloke in my bed, and I…liked it. I tightened my hold on him, stroked his thick, dark hair, and eventually fell asleep.