A Love Less Travelled By

By E H Timms

When star-crossed lovers Maria and George thought they had lost everything, they called on the goddess of love for help. She answered. Whisked away from their feuding families, and fostered by Professor Smith of Olson College (by some better known as Hephaestus), they have a chance to get things right this time: right names, right genders, right friends. But only if they can stop their past from haunting them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: E H Timms
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215923191

E H Timms

E H Timms won the BBC Wildlife Young Poet of the Year award, hasn't managed to stop writing since, and now lives in South West England with a computer tethered to one elbow and far too many books.

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A Love Less Travelled By

E. H. Timms

Copyright 2023 E H Timms

Smashwords Edition

Cover Design by GoCovers

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

Content Notes

A Love Less Travelled By

About the Author

Other Works by the Author

Contact the Author

Content Notes

Content notes are notes that help readers decide whether a book contains material that they need to be in a specific mindset for or avoid altogether. Sometimes they're known as trigger warnings, which are intended to help trauma survivors avoid being surprised by content that will trigger them.

This story contains:

Grief

Discussions of attempted suicide

Mentions of transphobia/transmisia

Mentions of emotional abuse

Mentions of fatphobia/fatmisia

Prologue

Beautiful women tend to attract stories. This woman is more beautiful than most in her sea-green coat and white jeans, chatting easily to the grounds-keeper as if there wasn't a gulf of age and class between them. (Their friendship bridges it, but they both know it's there, and step lightly.)

Then she turns, and sees someone, and her face lights up. If the students thought her beautiful before, it's nothing to how she looks when her love shines through.

They assume her beloved must be her equal, some equally tall and gorgeous person, but it turns out to be Professor Smith, picking his way along with his cane in his hand and his ever present frown. Professor Smith, as wide as he is tall, who teaches what Olson College refers to as 'Design Realisation' and the students call variously woodwork, metalwork or just 'making stuff'.

She greets him with a kiss on his scarred cheek, directly above his ace pride pin, and falls into step beside him with