Hidden Treasures

 

 

HIDDEN TREASURES

Kathleen Buckley

GENRE:  Sweet Historical Romance

 

Allan Everard, an earl's illegitimate son, is dismissed from his employment at his father’s death but inherits a former coaching inn. Needing to make a new life in London, he begins by leasing the inn to a charity.

Unexpectedly orphaned, Rosabel Stanbury and her younger sister are made wards of a distant, unknown cousin. Fearing his secretive ways and his intentions for them, Rosabel and Oriana flee to London where they are taken in by a women’s charity.

Drawn into Rosabel's problems, with his inn under surveillance by criminals, Allan has only a handful of unlikely allies, including an elderly general, a burglar, and an old lady who knows criminal slang. A traditional romance.

Enjoy an Excerpt:

Despite his active night, Higgs came in with hot water as Allan opened his eyes.

“Eight o’ the clock and a fine summer’s day,” his rascal announced, “if you happen to like the country, which I do. I’d move back to the fields and hedgerows of my youth if it wasn’t so pestilent hard to make a living there. If you’re meaning to stay more than another day, I’ll see about having your shirts and neckcloths washed,” he added inconsequentially. 

“I need to speak to one of the Stanburys’ neighbors. With luck, we’ll leave tomorrow. How will you occupy yourself today?” 

“I’ll have a quiet talk with Phelps. He spent yesterday listening to the folk around here. Grooms and stable-hands mostly, but a few others as well. I’ll write down what he learned. Don’t forget to lock what you don’t want to lose in your portmanteau. Countryside’s not as wicked as town, but there’s ding-boys everywhere.”

“Says the Ding-boy General.” 

About the Author:

Kathleen Buckley writes traditional historical romance (i.e. no explicit sex). There are fewer ballrooms and aristocratic courting rituals in her books and more problems than does-he-love-me/does-he-not. Sometimes there’s humor. Kathleen wanted to write from the time she learned to read and pursued this passion through a Master’s Degree in English, followed by the kind of jobs one might expect: light bookkeeping, security officer, paralegal. She did sell two stories to the late Robert Bloch, author of Psycho. And no, he wasn’t late at the time.

After moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she wrote her first historical romance, striving for Georgette Heyer’s style, followed by nine more.    

In Kathleen’s gentle romances, the characters tend to slide into love rather than fall in lust. Their stories are often set against the background of family relationships, crime, and legal issues, probably because of her work in a law firm. 

When she’s not writing or reading, she enjoys cooking dishes from eighteenth century cookbooks. Those dishes and more appear in her stories. Udder and root vegetables, anyone? 

Kathleen Buckley’s current work in progress is her first historical mystery, tentatively titled A Murder of Convenience. 

Q&A With the Author:

Who is your favorite author and why? 

That’s a difficult question as the answer changes depending on who I’m reading at the moment. As I write this, I’m binge-reading Carla Kelly, whose delightful and well-researched books only recently came to my attention. To my surprise, in addition to her Regency romances, she’s also written a series set in 1780s New Spain (now New Mexico) which is equally good. I live in New Mexico, and the setting felt like home. I could almost smell the posole (hominy and pork stew) simmering. 

What is something unique/quirky about you? 

I love doing research for my books. I don’t think that’s unique to me but maybe I carry it a little farther than most. My books are set in the 1740s, so research is (comparatively) easy, compared earlier periods. I make use of out-of-print books from that time, often available for free digitally, online paintings, museum collections of costume and furniture, plans of houses of that time, videos of the popular dances, blogs by the most authentic costumers, and old maps.

In addition I go through mid-eighteenth century cookbooks so my characters eat the right dishes, never scones or chocolates which did not exist in their present form until more than a century later. Sometimes I test recipes: usually the biscuits (i.e.,cookies) and cakes, which I bring to meetings of our local Jane Austen group, where they’re well received. Meat dishes tend to be more difficult, though I mean to try “potted meat”.I also hunt through apothecaries’ manuals to see what remedies they used.  

What was your inspiration for writing this book? 

Looking back, I think it was the many romances I’ve read in which the Regency or Georgian heroine flees her home without any serious consequences. Even nowadays that can go badly wrong. In the eighteenth century the best outcome she could expect would likely have been the workhouse. More likely would have been a brothel, starvation or murder. My books have happy endings but I prefer to introduce some reality.  

What did you enjoy most about writing this book? 

The research. I love doing research because I frequently discover the most unexpected things. Sometimes they appear in one of my books. In historical fiction I’ve come across people doing calculations with abacuses. Actually, they’d be using a system called Napier’s Bones instead: a series of wooden strips with numbers running down from 0 to 9 and across their tops from 0 to 9. By manipulating the strips it’s possible to multiply, divide, and find square roots. They were used for calculation into the nineteenth century. Something else I found fascinating was that at the time of Hidden Treasures, it was no more illegal to operate a brothel than a book shop. Possibly even less, if the bookseller sold books and pamphlets considered seditious.     

Do you have any other books you are working on that you can tell us about? 

I’ve recently turned in a mystery set in the mid-eighteenth century like my other novels, in which It’s set at an earl’s house party on the day of the harvest festival, so there are dozens of people present as potential witnesses and suspects. The most likely suspect is the lady one of the investigating magistrates had once hoped to marry. With information from more than a few miles distant hard to discover, no obvious motive, a locked room and rumors of witchcraft, the magistrates have a thorny puzzle to solve.

I’m in the first stages of planning another mystery, this one involving a lady’s disappearance from an evening party. It’s too early to say more than that there are issues of inheritance.

Anything more you would like to say to your readers and fans?

I hope my readers enjoy my books as much as I enjoy writing them. And if they get some insight into how different life was two or three hundred years ago, I consider that a bonus.   

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/kathleen_buckley

Website: https://18thcenturyromance.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18thcenturyromance/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kathleen-Buckley/author/B072J2GPZ3

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