Blog Tour: HIDDEN TREASURES by Kathleen Buckley

 

HIDDEN TREASURES

Kathleen Buckley

 

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GENRE:  Sweet Historical Romance

 

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BLURB:

 

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.

 

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Excerpt Three:

 

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.”

 

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 GUEST POST

Please describe a compelling scene in your book and why it's important.

Hidden Treasures: London, 1740

Chapter 6 of Hidden Treasures precipitates Rosabel and her fourteen year old sister, Oriana, into danger after they flee a distant cousin they never knew of before his inheritance of their home and his appointment as their guardian on their father’s death. Because of his odd, secretive ways, Rosabel has become increasingly suspicious of  him and his intentions for Oriana. They mean to take refuge with their grandfather in London. But on arriving at General Sir Oliver Milton’s door, their aunt by marriage claims not to know them and turns them away. The footman advises them to leave or the mistress will summon a beadle to remove them.

They have only four shillings tuppence left and are hungry and tired from their journey on the stage coach’s roof. What are they to do? Rosabel wonders.

Her sister asks if they can rest a while before going on so they sit on the steps of the church in the nearby square. Slightly revived, Rosabel decides they must go to their family’s friend and former attorney, until she realizes it is too late in the day and he will be gone from  his office. Do they have money enough to stay in a cheap lodging overnight? At least Ory is not panicking, but that is because she does not understand how little money they have left and how expensive London is. Or else because she has always depended on Rosabel, who has taken the place of their mother.

And what if Attorney Brand is out of town to visit a client? There had been no time to write to him, as the opportunity to slip away from home had come suddenly. She has made too many mistakes when even she knew how dangerous London could be. She brought Oriana to town to save her and instead may have doomed both of them to starvation or infamy. They lived in no parish in London so were ineligible for charity. Would they be taken up by the watch as vagrants and cast into prison? Would they end in the workhouse? She bursts into tears.

She is still sniffling and wiping her eyes when a gentleman asks if he can help them. Before she can compose herself to answer, Oriana, ordinarily a timid girl, explains they have been refused at their grandfather’s house and have nowhere to go. Rosabel wishes they might trust him but knows they cannot although he introduces himself as Wilfred Simmons, curate, St. Giles-without-Cripplegate and does not look threatening. Still she hesitates, until he says he has friends inside the church who will vouch for him, and adds, “Ma’am, no one has ever been abducted from St. George’s Church, Hanover Square.”

This meeting leads to Rosabel and Oriana’s admission to a charity that houses indigent women with children and endangered women. Their problem comes to the attention of the charity’s founder, an archrogue, and leads to Rosabel meeting Allan, who will be instrumental in freeing the girls from the guardianship.

 

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

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.

 

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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GIVEAWAY 

Kathleen Buckley will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

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