Tag Archives: Jessica Cale

First Kiss Friday with Jessica Cale

08 Friday Feb 2019

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Welcome to another First Kiss Friday! Today I’m welcoming my friend and fellow Bluestocking Belle Jessica Cale to give us an excerpt from her novella Beauty and the Bounder. Jessica and I are thrilled our box set with the Belles, Valentines From Bath, releases tomorrow! Enjoy this excerpt and happy reading!

Excerpt

“I’m afraid there are some things rather more important than a fortune. To me,” Seb admitted.

Emilia arched a dark brow, intrigued. “Are there?”

He bit his lip to keep himself from biting hers. She was a lady and likely a maiden; he couldn’t have his way with her in a public pool. He glanced down as he felt her other hand span his ribs. If anyone happened by, this would look very, very bad.

Seb stepped closer. “Wit,” he offered. “Intelligence, beauty, passion.”

“I see,” she murmured, quite breathless. “And have you met such a paragon, Mr. Virtue?”

Though every bit of good sense he had left urged him not to, he leaned in, grasping the tiles on either side of her curvaceous thighs. If he took her in his arms, he wouldn’t let go. “I’m looking at her,” he whispered.

Emilia’s eyes widened, every shade of amber shining in the candlelight. He felt her toes brush his thighs under the water. “And . . .” Her gaze dropped to his mouth before returning to his eyes. “If she had no fortune or name?”

“I’d give her mine,” he swore.

Emilia shuddered. Misreading it as a reaction to the cold, he folded her in his arms to warm her. Her hands spanned his back to pull him closer, and before he could think better of it, he was kissing her. He couldn’t say if he’d initiated it or if she had, but the entire French army couldn’t make him stop. Her lips were even lusher than they looked, her mouth hot and hungry. She kissed him like it was the last time as well as the first, and maybe it was. Maybe his years of planning, saving, and practicing had all led to this one fleeting moment, this one illicit kiss.

It was worth it.

 

Valentines From Bath:
A Bluestocking Belles Collection
Release Date: February 9, 2019
Just $0.99!

Blurb for Beauty and the Bounder:

The moment Lady Emilia sets eyes on the Chevalier d’Aubusson, she knows their fates are tied together. For good or ill, she cannot say. A mysterious aristocrat with a tragic past, the chevalier makes waves with his considerable charm.

But the chevalier is not as he seems. There are cracks in his story, and Emilia never could resist a mystery. Whether he’s a gentleman or a bounder, he might just be the man for her.

About Valentines From Bath:

The Master of Ceremonies announces a great ball to be held on Valentine’s Day in the Upper Assembly Rooms of Bath. Ladies of the highest rank—and some who wish they were—scheme, prepare, and compete to make best use of the opportunity. Dukes, earls, tradesmen, and the occasional charlatan are alert to the possibilities as the event draws nigh.

But anything can happen in the magic of music and candlelight as couples dance, flirt, and open themselves to romantic possibilities. Problems and conflict may just fade away at a Valentine’s Day Ball.

25% of the proceeds benefit our mutual charity the Malala Fund

Buy Links:
Amazon US | iBooks | Kobo | Nook | Smashwords
Amazon AU | BR | CA | DE | ES | FR | IN | JP | IT | MX | NL | UK

 

Jessica Cale is a romance author, editor, and historian based in North Carolina. Originally from Minnesota, she lived in Wales for several years where she earned a BA in History and an MFA in Creative Writing while climbing castles and photographing mines for history magazines. She kidnapped (“married”) her very own British prince (close enough) and is enjoying her happily ever after with him in a place where no one understands his accent. She is the editor of Dirty, Sexy History and you can visit her at www.dirtysexyhistory.com.

Website: http://www.dirtysexyhistory.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorjessicacale

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jessicacale

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/caleisafourletterword

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/rainbowcarnage

First Kiss Friday with guest Jessica Cale

05 Friday May 2017

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On today’s First Kiss Friday, it’s my pleasure to welcome back my friend, Jessica Cale. Jessica writes those page turning novels you just can’t put down until you’ve read the very last line. We hope you enjoy this excerpt from her upcoming release, Broken Things. Happy reading and enjoy.

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Excerpt:

Hearing someone knock on the bar for service, he turned too quickly and bumped into Meg. She lost her balance and he caught her automatically, holding her up as she steadied herself.

Someone whistled.

Jake ignored it until another followed, then a third. He looked around the bar in confusion, while Meg turned scarlet in his grasp.

“Bastard mistletoe.” She muttered, looking anywhere but at him.

Bess cackled as she passed them, an empty tray lolling on her hip.

Mistletoe. Jake frowned at the spiny leaves hanging from the ceiling. He was meant to kiss her, wasn’t he?

It wasn’t his tradition, but the punters thought he was odd and foreign enough already without him drawing attention to it. He wouldn’t embarrass Meg by refusing. Wasn’t it meant to be bad luck if you didn’t?

These and a dozen other reasons flew through his mind to justify the fact that he wanted to. He wanted to kiss her very, very badly.

Davey would no doubt try to charge him for it. Fortunately, the little rat was nowhere to be seen.

“What are they waiting for?” someone whispered behind him.

“Kiss her!” Joe Ledford bellowed, covering his encouragement up with a series of contrived coughs.

Finally, Meg looked up at him with an unfamiliar light shining in her eyes.

It was fear.

Was she afraid of him? His heart ached. He knew from experience he didn’t have do anything to inspire fear in women, but he thought he and Meg had grown close, or something like it. He had thought they were friends, though her very presence drove him to distraction and he’d spent long hours talking himself out of visiting her room again. She was different, he knew it. Why was she afraid?

He spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. He wouldn’t kiss her if she didn’t want him to.

Meg’s eyes flickered as her expression changed to one of steely determination. “Bugger it,” she muttered and stepped fully into his arms. Standing on her toes, she slid her arms around his neck. He caught her waist automatically, welcoming the feeling of her soft curves pressed up against him. She smelled of rosewater and tobacco, an intoxicating combination at once earthy and sweet. Her eyelashes dropped, and she hesitantly touched her lips to his.

It was not the quick peck he had expected. Her kiss was slow and deep. She tentatively moved her lips against his, testing the way they fit together. He held her flush against his hips, helpless. His hair stood on end as she ran the edge of her tongue along his bottom lip, nipping at it softly with her teeth.

He sighed against her lips, his hands drifting up her back. Seized with wickedness, he wound her thick braid around his wrist. She’d seemed to like it when he’d pulled it before. He tugged it gently and her mouth opened with a low, throaty moan. He could barely hear it, but he could taste it. His tongue delved into the sweet heat of her mouth, savoring the crush of her lips, the caress of her tongue, and a taste that was all her own.

The bar was so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat. Everything seemed to disappear around them except for the crackle of the fire in the hearth and the distant smell of ale, receding behind the delicious scent of the goddess in his arms. She tightened her grasp around his neck and kissed him harder.

Someone cleared their throat. He ignored them.

“So that’s that, then,” someone muttered.

The odd finality of this comment seemed to reach Meg through the haze and she broke off the kiss too quickly, her hands sliding slowly down his chest. She rested them there a moment and held his gaze with huge eyes bright and green as leaves in the sun; luminous and tinged with gold.

He saw it then. There was desire there, obvious and painful as his own. A measure of confusion, perhaps, but it wasn’t as dire as he’d suspected.

Meg Henshawe was not afraid of anything.

He swallowed.

Meg smiled and stepped out of his arms. She made a show of straightening her hair and shrugged it off. “Pay attention lads, you might learn a thing or two.”

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Broken Things The Southwark Saga, Book 4

Genre: Historical Romance

Content warnings: Profanity, violence, graphic sex, and references to domestic violence and sexual assault.

Rival. Sister. Barmaid. Whore.

Meg Henshawe has been a lot of things in her life, and few of them good. As proprietress of The Rose and Crown in Restoration Southwark, she has squandered her life catering to the comfort of workmen and thieves. Famous for her beauty as much as her reputation for rage, Meg has been coveted, abused, and discarded more than once. She is resigned to fighting alone until a passing boxer offers a helping hand.

Jake Cohen needs a job. When an injury forces him out of the ring for good, all he’s left with is a pair of smashed hands and a bad leg. Keeping the peace at The Rose is easy, especially with a boss as beautiful—and wickedly funny—as Meg Henshawe. In her way, she’s as much of an outcast as Jake, and she offers him three things he thought he’d never see again: a home, family, and love.

After Meg’s estranged cousin turns up and seizes the inn, Meg and Jake must work together to protect their jobs and keep The Rose running. The future is uncertain at best, and their pasts won’t stay buried. Faced with one setback after another, they must decide if what they have is worth the fight to keep it. Can broken things ever really be fixed?

Buy Links:

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34755862-broken-things

Amazon US: https://goo.gl/i2k7jk

aAmazon UK: https://goo.gl/PcomJH

Amazon AUS: https://goo.gl/TXRJD1

Amazon Canada: https://goo.gl/6bK5S1

Amazon India: https://goo.gl/ni04W6

B&N: https://goo.gl/BuQDX2

Kobo: https://goo.gl/gUqG6X

iBooks: https://goo.gl/DSNmhn

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About the author

Jessica Cale is a historical romance author and journalist based in North Carolina. Originally from Minnesota, she lived in Wales for several years where she earned a BA in History and an MFA in Creative Writing while climbing castles and photographing mines for history magazines. She kidnapped (“married”) her very own British prince (close enough) and is enjoying her happily ever after with him in a place where no one understands his accent. She is the editor of Dirty, Sexy History and you can visit her at www.dirtysexyhistory.com.

Also find Jessica at Facebook & Twitter

 

 

First Kiss Friday with Bluestocking Belle Jessica Cale

07 Friday Oct 2016

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Today on First Kiss Friday, it is my pleasure to welcome Jessica Cale and her characters from Artemis in the Bluestocking Belles’ holiday box set Holly and Hopeful Hearts. Let me also just say that this story is brilliant and had me hooked from the very first page! You’re going to love it, along with this excerpt. Enjoy!

Excerpt:

“Charlotte?” Apollo’s voice was a temperate breeze in the chill of the night. He had been so kind to her. She wanted to be his countess, wanted to be the kind of wife she believed he deserved, but knew in her heart she couldn’t. She hated to prevent him from finding such a paragon, but she couldn’t cheat her child of the chance at a good life, either. She could not protect them both. When she turned to face Apollo, there were tears of frustration in her eyes.

He gathered her in his arms and held her close without a word, and a pathetic-sounding sob broke free from her throat at the surprise. Aside from dancing, he’d barely touched her. She surrendered to it, cautiously wrapping her arms around his long, lean waist. His shirt was stiff with starch beneath her cheek and the delicious smell of him drove all thought from her mind. His cologne was light and vaguely herbal, like elderflowers and lemon in brandy. Masculine, but not overtly so. It mixed with his own chemistry and became something more, the smell of desire itself. It would be so easy to love him, but she knew she would be doing him a disservice.

He loosed his hold on her only enough to seek her gaze with heavy-lidded eyes blue as medicine bottles. “What troubles you?”

She glanced over his shoulder to be sure they were alone. “I don’t belong here.”

“You belong with me.” His assurance was heady as laudanum and twice as tempting. She longed to drink his words and forget.

“You deserve better,” she said, looking away. “I can’t be everything you need.” She pulled out of his arms reluctantly and sunk onto a bench overlooking a fallow field.

He sat beside her without a sound. “You already are.”

Her laugh was defensive and more than a little morose. “The things I’ve done, Apollo…”

He took her hand, offering her his strength. “I don’t care, Charlotte.”

“You ought to,” she fired back, but did not withdraw her hand from his grasp. “It wasn’t just Marksby. Perhaps you’ve heard the rumors. If you haven’t, you will. Byron, Coleridge, Kean, dozens of others. Opium, laudanum, absinthe, women.” Her voice cracked.

His eyebrows shot up at her confession. “Women?”

She cringed inwardly. Her past had succeeded in shocking him where her behavior had failed. “Many,” she confessed. “So many. What must you think of me?”

He wrenched his gaze away, appearing to consider something. Having second thoughts, like as not. She couldn’t blame him.

Her hands shook as she tried to explain herself. He had been lovely to her and the last thing she wanted was to hurt him. “If I may be candid, I’ve come to care for you a great deal and that is the reason I cannot let you marry someone like me. You ought to find yourself a real lady with whom to acquire a child or two.”

“And you?” His face looked stricken as he turned to her, his high cheeks streaked with red. “You will miss your lovers?” he asked without a hint of judgement or scorn.

Her chest shook with unshed tears in time with the shaking of her hands. “I do not want you to think for a moment my reluctance stems from any defect on your part. It is rather the contrary. We will never be equals, and I cannot allow myself to believe you could ever truly return the feelings I have for you.”

He opened his mouth to speak, clearly miffed.

“Forgive me, I did not mean to cause you embarrassment,” she said. “What I am failing to articulate is this: you need a lady deserving of your kindness, someone from your world. I do not belong here.”

“I daresay I know a thing or two about not belonging.” He let out a long breath. “Charlotte, I adore you. I don’t want someone from this world, I want you. You have brought a light into my life I thought was extinguished forever. Don’t leave me.”

As if she could. The moonlight in his eyes inspired a kind of madness in her, and her gaze dropped again to his lips as he implored her, “Don’t go.”

If his eyes were the ocean, his voice was the undertow, drawing her into the unknown. She drifted into him like a ship lost at sea, helpless against his pull, until she felt his face against hers. Her cheek connected with his lean jaw and she could smell the elderflower on his throat. His pulse echoed in her ear, or perhaps it was her own.

Because she might never get another chance, she touched her lips to his.

He let her.

It was strange and marvelous, kissing someone for the first time. The surprise at the new sensation gave way to a restless eagerness to taste and know through touch. The greater significance of the moment was lost to details like the way his nose touched her cheek and the feel of his breath on her lips.

He cradled her face in his hand as he returned her kiss, his mouth remarkably soft for something that looked so sculpted. Like the man himself, his kiss was achingly sensual; there was nothing Charlotte could do but submit. Emboldened by her involuntary moan, he deepened the kiss, tasting her so thoroughly she felt dizzy.

Coming up for air, he rested his forehead against hers. She took his face in her hands, caressing the blade of his cheeks and the plane of his jaw. His eyelashes tickled her face as he closed his eyes, relaxing into her hands.

In all her years, she had never been kissed like that. A heady mix of desire, devotion, and natural skill, it was more than a kiss, it was love itself.

Jessica Cale is the award-winning author of the historical romance series, The Southwark Saga. Originally from Minnesota, she lived in Wales for several years where she earned a BA in History and an MFA in Creative Writing while climbing castles and photographing mines for history magazines. She kidnapped (“married”;) her very own British prince (close enough) and is enjoying her happily ever after with him in North Carolina. Visit her history blog at www.dirtysexyhistory.com.

Website

ABOUT HOLLY AND HOPEFUL HEARTS

 When the Duchess of Haverford sends out invitations to a Yuletide house party and a New Year’s Eve ball at her country estate, Hollystone Hall, those who respond know that Her Grace intends to raise money for her favorite cause and promote whatever marriages she can. Eight assorted heroes and heroines set out with their pocketbooks firmly clutched and hearts in protective custody. Or are they?

A Suitable Husband, by Jude Knight

As the Duchess of Haverford’s companion, Cedrica Grenford is not treated as a poor relation and is encouraged to mingle with Her Grace’s guests. Surely she can find a suitable husband amongst the gentlemen gathered for the duchess’s house party. Above stairs or possibly below.

Valuing Vanessa, by Susana Ellis

Facing a dim future as a spinster under her mother’s thumb, Vanessa Sedgely makes a practical decision to attach an amiable gentleman who will not try to rule her life.

A Kiss for Charity, by Sherry Ewing

Young widow Grace, Lady de Courtenay, has no idea how a close encounter with a rake at a masquerade ball would make her yearn for love again. Can she learn to forgive Lord Nicholas Lacey and set aside their differences to let love into her heart?

 Artemis, by Jessica Cale

Actress Charlotte Halfpenny is in trouble. Pregnant, abandoned by her lover, and out of a job, Charlotte faces eviction two weeks before Christmas. When the reclusive Earl of Somerton makes her an outrageous offer, she has no choice but to accept. Could he be the man of her dreams, or is the nightmare just beginning?

The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, by Jude Knight

James must marry to please his grandfather, the duke, and to win social acceptance for himself and his father’s other foreign-born children. But only Lady Sophia Belvoir makes his heart sing, and to win her he must invite himself to spend Christmas at the home of his father’s greatest enemy.

Christmas Kisses, by Nicole Zoltack

Louisa Wycliff, Dowager Countess of Exeter wants only for her darling daughter, Anna, to find a man she can love and marry. Appallingly, Anna has her sights on a scoundrel of a duke who chases after every skirt he sees. Anna truly thinks the dashing duke cares for her, but her mother has her doubts.

An Open Heart, by Caroline Warfield

Esther Baumann longs for a loving husband who will help her create a home where they will teach their children to value the traditions of their people, but she wants a man who is also open to new ideas and happy to make friends outside their narrow circle. Is it so unreasonable to ask for toe curling passion as well?

Dashing Through the Snow, by Amy Rose Bennett

Headstrong bluestocking, Miss Kate Woodville, never thought her Christmas would be spent racing across England with a viscount hell-bent on vengeance. She certainly never expected to find love…

Holly and Hopeful Hearts is a Bluestocking Belles Collection available for pre-order at $2.99 and will be released November 8, 2016. 25% of the sales benefit the Belles’ mutual charity the Malala Fund.

Buy Links:

Amazon US | Amazon AU | Amazon CA | Amazon UK

Kobo | iBooks | Nook | Smashwords