Where Your Treasure Is
By M. C. Bunn
Publication Date: 23rd April 2021
Publisher: Bellastoria Press
Page Length: 454 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Victorian Romance
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Feisty, independent heiress Winifred de la Coeur has never wanted to live according to someone else’s rules—but even she didn’t plan on falling in love with a bank robber.
Winifred is a wealthy, nontraditional beauty who bridles against the strict rules and conventions of Victorian London society. When she gets caught up in the chaos of a bungled bank robbery, she is thrust unwillingly into an encounter with Court Furor, a reluctant getaway driver and prizefighter. In the bitter cold of a bleak London winter, sparks fly.
Winifred and Court are two misfits in their own circumscribed worlds—the fashionable beau monde with its rigorously upheld rules, and the gritty demimonde, where survival often means life-or-death choices.
Despite their conflicting backgrounds, they fall desperately in love while acknowledging the impossibility of remaining together. Returning to their own worlds, they try to make peace with their lives until a moment of unrestrained honesty and defiance threatens to topple the deceptions that they have carefully constructed to protect each other.
A story of the overlapping entanglements of Victorian London’s social classes, the strength of family bonds and true friendship, and the power of love to heal a broken spirit.
Excerpt
Winifred and the man stumbled down a flight of narrow stairs. He kicked a door. Before them a deserted kitchen gleamed. Pots steamed unattended. The man pushed her toward the scullery. In a moment they would be outdoors. She redoubled her efforts to break free of him.
In a corner, a scullery maid and a butcher’s boy kissed. At the sound of Winifred’s screams, they broke apart guiltily and stared openmouthed at her. Her captor swore and pointed his gun at the couple. The girl screeched, and the boy snatched up a dripping pot lid in defense of his paramour.
“Fire!” the man shouted at them. “Run for your lives!”
The boy threw down the pot lid, grabbed his girl, and they fled outside.
Gasping, the man pushed Winifred after them. Stairs, fresh air—she gulped at it. Then she saw a hackney waiting in the alley and the driver in his purple coat.
******
Court’s horse remained wary, her ears up, and swung her head toward the stairs that led down to the scullery. All at once, the butcher’s boy and a shrieking scullery maid clambered up the steps. They raced down the alley and took off in the boy’s cart at top speed. There was another rumble like the one Court had heard a minute ago. It sounded like distant thunder. He was vaguely aware of a rattle of bells in the street at the other end of the alley. A fire brigade passed. He smelled smoke.
Suddenly Geoff and a woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs. They were covered in white dust and coughing. A bright, wet, bloody streak covered half of Geoff’s face. Their progress was impeded by the woman’s wildly kicking little boots. Her struggles and the flashes of her bright green and purple silks made her look like an exotic bird thrashing in Geoff’s arms.
“What in ’ell ’appened to you? Where’s ’Ez?” Court shouted and ran forward to help.
“I don’t know!” Geoff coughed. “Forget ’im! We’ve got to get out ’o ’ere!”
“What about ’er? I saw a fire truck! Is she ’urt?”
“She’s comin’ with us!”
“Bleedin’ ’ell! ’Ave you lost your mind?” Court shouted. “Put ’er down!”
Geoff coughed and swore. “No! She saw me! Open the door!”
Geoff did not wait for Court to comply and thrust the woman at him. While Geoff bent over in another fit of coughing, the woman struggled and kicked, fanning dust all over Court, and cried for help. Involuntarily, he clapped his hand over her mouth. She only screamed louder.
“Shut up, you fat sow!” Geoff swatted her across the temple with Hez’s pistol.
The woman’s eyes rolled and she went limp.
Court howled in dismay and caught her.
Unconscious, her face took on an even sicklier pallor than the dust already gave it. In his arms, she was a mountain of soft cashmere and folds of velvet. Her mantle fell open, and her scent hit him. Lilies and some dark, exotic spice. It was so unexpected and heavenly that the alley and the hackney disappeared. Even his panic was gone.
“Give ’er ’ere!” Geoff grabbed the woman and hauled her into the cab. The hem of her skirt caught on the door and ripped. “Give me your tie,” Geoff ordered.
Court removed his neckerchief, thinking Geoff wanted to wipe the blood off his face. Instead, he gagged the woman then removed his belt in order to bind her wrists. This was too much. Court grabbed the woman’s ankles. “Put ’er ’ands in front o’ ’er at least!”
“The bitch tried to stab me with a ’atpin!”
“Do it, or we ain’t goin’ nowhere!”
Geoff scowled in disgust but tied her hands in front. “Soft!”
From above came another low rumble. The mare lunged. Court let go of the woman to steady the horse. Another fire truck raced past the end of the alley. There was a distinct odor of smoke.
Geoff dumped the woman onto the floor of the cab. “The gas lines is goin’! Go on, drive!”
In spite of the horse, Court made another attempt to extract the woman from Geoff’s clutches. “We can’t leave ’Ez! We can’t take ’er!”
Geoff clicked off the safety and waved the pistol under Court’s nose. When Court did not let go of the woman, he pointed the pistol at her head. “I ain’t arguin’! Drive!” He slammed the cab door.
His heart hammering, his head whirling, Court untied the horse, swung up onto the box, and grabbed the reins. As he turned the cab into the street behind the bank, yet another fire truck raced past.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! They were in for it now.
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M. C. Bunn
M. C. Bunn grew up in a house full of books, history, and music. “Daddy was a master storyteller. The past was another world, but one that seemed familiar because of him. He read aloud at the table, classics or whatever historical subject interested him. His idea of bedtime stories were passages from Dickens, Twain, and Stevenson. Mama told me I could write whatever I wanted. She put a dictionary in my hands and let me use her typewriter, or watch I, Claudius and Shoulder to Shoulder when they first aired on Masterpiece Theatre. She was the realist. He was the romantic. They were a great team.”
Where Your Treasure Is, a novel set in late-Victorian London and Norfolk, came together after the sudden death of the author’s father. “I’d been teaching high school English for over a decade and had spent the summer cleaning my parents’ house and their offices. It was August, time for classes to begin. The characters emerged out of nowhere, sort of like they knew I needed them. They took over.”
She had worked on a novella as part of her master’s degree in English years before but set it aside, along with many other stories. “I was also writing songs for the band I’m in and had done a libretto for a sacred piece. All of that was completely different from Where Your Treasure Is. Before her health declined, my mother heard Treasure’s first draft and encouraged me to return to prose. The novel is a nod to all the wonderful books my father read to us, the old movies we stayed up to watch, a thank you to my parents, especially Mama for reminding me that nothing is wasted. Dreams don’t have to die. Neither does love.”
When M. C. Bunn is not writing, she’s researching or reading. Her idea of a well-appointed room includes multiple bookshelves, a full pot of coffee, and a place to lie down with a big, old book. To further feed her soul, she and her husband take long walks with their dog, Emeril in North Carolina’s woods, or she makes music with friends.
“I try to remember to look up at the sky and take some time each day to be thankful.”
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