Obstinate Headache Girl

Happily ever after isn’t for the working class.

Though Clara Fletcher’s life was recently upended, following her best friend all the way to Scotland was hardly any trouble. What troubled her, beyond her constant headaches, was wondering whether Harry would come with them.

Harry Stanton, the staid, always proper butler, had been the rock upon which Clara stood since the moment she’d arrived to take up her position in her friend and employer’s household. By day, they ran the house side by side. Each night, they slept the same way. Clara had never been good at that—sleeping. Something about the past that lingered like her headaches wouldn’t allow it, unless she was lying next to him. It was a daring impropriety, but the only one they could allow, as domestics in the same household could never marry and keep the positions they so cherished. Acting on their long-held but still-silent feelings wouldn’t be worth the risk.

Moving to Kinloss would be a new beginning for all of them, but the roads they traveled to get there were eerily familiar to Clara. Scotland was her home. Or at least, it had been. Edinburgh was where she’d buried her secrets, and nearly from the minute they’d arrived, the mail coach had carried those secrets right to their little village.

Clara was an author. An accomplished one, though the impact of her work was previously unknown, even to her. In the bright eyes of a villager’s daughter, Clara begins to see the revolutionary difference her inexpensive pamphlets of whimsical, educational stories for children are making. But the name on the papers grasped in her tiny hands isn’t Clara’s own.

Now, she has a choice to make. She can either give up control of her own life’s work or do the thing she’s quite possibly the worst at: asking for help. More importantly, whichever path she treads—will Harry follow?

Tropes you’ll enjoy:

• Friends to lovers
• Forbidden love
• Workplace romance
• Class difference
• Secret profession
• Innocent cohabitation
• Bluestocking FMC
• Found family