NBtM Virtual Tour, featuring Kathleen Buckley's HIDDEN TREASURES (Guest Post, Excerpt & Giveaway)

Hidden Treasures
by: Kathleen Buckley
Genre: Sweet Historical Romance
Release Date: September 16, 2024
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press

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.

I don’t use actual events as such in my books, though I may allude to them as part of the background: George II’s victory at the battle of Dettingen or the harsh winter of 1739-40 or the food riots. Many historical fiction novels make use of the great events of history, and I enjoy them, but most of us play out our lives on a smaller stage. We find our love, challenges, loss, and triumphs in daily life. The background of my characters’ surroundings and lives is as accurate as I can make it. You will find the occasional murder, touch of treason, financial jiggery-pokery, and romance in my novels, however.

England in the 18th century was not an inclusive society. A man could vote if he owned property worth 40 shillings (two pounds) per year. This doesn’t sound like much, but many, like farm laborers and soldiers, might earn fourteen pounds or less per annum and owned no property. No women could vote. In Hidden Treasures, my tenth novel set in the 1740s, Allan Everard, the male protagonist, is struck by the realization that receiving the gift of an old coaching inn makes him eligible to vote.

Anyone not a member of the Church of England was unable to attend English grammar schools and universities. Women were not accepted either, of course.

Rosabel is the daughter of a country gentleman. Allan is the illegitimate son of a baron, dismissed from the estate on his father’s death.

Nothing moves a story along like a bit of crime or skullduggery, so legal issues turn up in my books. Rosabel is determined to save her younger sister and herself from the guardianship of a distant cousin she fears. The guardianship procedures are as accurate as I could make them based on research into the workings of the Court of Chancery.

Rosabel and Allan meet through a charity for indigent women and children. It’s not based on a real institution because support for the indigent and orphans was a patchwork with many holes in it. England had no orphanages yet although the London Foundling Hospital opened in 1741. A few years later, Sir John Fielding, the Bow Street magistrate, organized institutions to feed, clothe, and teach homeless children trades. Workhouses were the last resort for the homeless and penniless.

I based my fictional “safe house” on late nineteenth century photographs of a real coaching inn. The main change I made was to move it to a different street.

I use a copy of John Rocque’s 1746 map to describe the streets of London as they were in the 1740s. As the scale is twenty-six inches to one mile it’s fortunate it came in 24 sheets. I wouldn’t have had room enough to spread out the entire thirteen by six and one-half feet.

Most of the women Rosabel meets belong to the lower classes. Many poor Londoners lived in one room with no running water or cooking facilities. They bought their food from cookshops or street vendors. There was no public water supply. Those with enough money subscribed to companies that piped water into London. Public fountains were maintained by philanthropists. This would have been a problem for washing but not drinking because for the working class and the poor, including children, the usual non-intoxicating beverage was small beer. Cheap and with a very low alcohol content, it provided calories and Vitamin B which helped make up for a lack of vegetables in their diet.

I have more copies of 18th century cookbooks than any rational person needs and sometimes I test the recipes, though not udder and root vegetables or dressed lamb’s head. And no, the latter does not mean “in a frilly cap”. You will not find my characters eating scones or chocolates, neither of which existed in their modern form until more than a hundred years later. Unless they were Scots or Irish, they did not drink whisky/whiskey; anyone who could afford it drank brandy and those who couldn’t drank gin, or rum if they were sailors.

In writing Hidden Treasures, I already had a cache of research to use, including digital newspapers, magazines, books, paintings and illustrations of the period. The Old Bailey online is a treasure trove for court proceedings and background on living conditions. Then there’s my bulging shelf of books on the eighteenth century in general, dictionaries, including one on criminal slang, and on topics like how to ride sidesaddle and on the coach routes to almost anywhere in England. I hope my readers enjoy visiting the England of nearly three hundred years ago as much as I enjoy writing about it, even without the depiction of great historical events.

“Sir, we came to London to live with our grandfather, but he is ill, and we couldn’t see him, and our uncle’s wife didn’t believe we are his grandchildren, and now we have no place to go.”

Rosabel wished whoever he was might be able to aid them, knowing she dare not trust him, not after their encounter with the woman at the inn. He was probably a rakehell. Gentlemen did not otherwise concern themselves with females of the servant class, as they must appear to be, clad in their dusty, countrified clothing.

Blinking away her last tears, she was tempted to revise her opinion. His plain black suit, slight body, and untidy hair suggested quite another sort of man. His eyes twinkled when she met his gaze. “May I introduce myself, ma’am? Wilfred Simmons, curate, St. Giles-without-Cripplegate. If you and your sister have nowhere to stay, your situation is serious. London is a hard place even for men if they have no work and no money. A female without resources risks danger to both body and soul. Please let me assist you.”

She bit her lip. Mr. Simmons appeared to be respectable. He had a gentleman’s voice and was no more than four-and-twenty, she guessed. Beside her, Ory sniffed dolefully.

“You are wise not to be too trusting. I have friends who will vouch for me inside.” He smiled at her expression. “Ma’am, no one has ever been abducted from St. George’s Church, Hanover Square.”

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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.

Places to find Kathleen Buckley:

Website | Goodreads | Instagram | Linktr.ee | Amazon Author Page

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