Kisses, She Wrote Quotes

“A girl silly enough to leave her private thoughts displayed so blatantly in a plain notebook tucked snugly in the back of an undistinguished piece of furniture in the corner of an out-of-the-way parlor frequented only by her closest female companions deserved to have her privacy invaded. He continued to invade.”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“So, this is what it feels like,” she said a bit wonderingly.
“That—” He kissed her neck as she squeezed him gently and he saw stars. “Is what it feels like.”
Hesitantly, she stroked her hand along the length of him. “Why does touching you here make me feel liquid and hot?”
“Because your body wants it.”
“I know,” she whispered. “At least, I suspected.”
She had suspected him into a frenzy several mornings while reading her diary. And now she was putting her suspicions to expert use.
Tentatively her hand explored and his cock jerked beneath the caress. He pressed into her palm, needing her to touch him harder. He could not endure another moment of this teasing. He hadn’t sufficient self-control. He never had, but he’d never before put himself to the test.
Grasping her hand gently he removed it from him. But he could not tear himself away. Not just yet.
“I can give your body what it wants without assailing your virginity.”
“I know that too,” she admitted.
He knew she knew it, but he was not certain to what extent. “You know quite a lot for an unmarried girl.”
“I read.”
“I’d like to borrow your books.”

-Jacqueline & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“She seemed sensible, well informed, and probably too intelligent for him.”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“There was nothing to be said, only the happiness she had dreamed now to be seized. But the hurt was too fresh.
She brandished the broadsheet. “I admit, my lord, that your theory about Christmas gifts chosen to suit the recipient for greatest effect has merit.”
“Only if the effect is to inspire mercy,” he replied quietly.
She could not bear the confusion. She dipped her gaze. “When?” she whispered.
“At the chateau.”
Her eyes came up. “At first?”
“I was intrigued. I had never known a woman like you.” His throat moved awkwardly. “I came to understand that there are no others.”
The page crinkled between her fingers. “Why did you do it?”
“Because I wanted you, and I think I didn’t know how to have you otherwise. Jacqueline, I have been a great fool, but I never wished to hurt you. I beg of you, if you can someday forgive m—”
Her palm upon his chest stayed his words. Then she leaned forward, released a shaking breath, and buried her face in his shoulder.
He wrapped his arms about her and held her tight. “I assume from this response that you will not, after all, be marrying Tarleton?” he said into her hair.
“I will not. I could not.” Tears of joy arose in her eyes and soaked his shoulder.
He stroked her hair. “Then perhaps you might consider marrying me instead? If you don’t, you know, you will never live this down, embracing a man with a hundred people looking on.”
“Are they looking?”
“Yes. I think they’re all eager to hear you sing ‘God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.’ I know I am.”
“Is there perhaps a black veil lying anywhere about?”
“No, but I could remove my coat and you could throw that over your head. No one would recognize you, I’m certain.”
She laughed and he held her tighter yet.
“My darling,” he whispered close. “My love.”

-Jacqueline & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“Look at those women over there, Bella. They haven’t ceased staring at me all night. One would think they’d never seen a fictional character come to life before.”
“They and everybody else,” Arabella said impatiently. “But not for— Jackie, are you listening to me?”
“And that Baron whatever-his-name-is has winked at me six times. Six! Can you imagine? It is positively diverting.”
“Jackie, look at me.” Arabella held a cheaply printed broadsheet. “Have you read this? Part III?”
“I have. It is a very satisfying finale.”
“Satisfying?”
“Everybody ends up just as they should,” she forced herself to say.
Arabella squeezed her hand. “This is not like you, darling. He hurt you terribly, and I understand that this ending satisfies that hurt. But you cannot like the stone princess’s fate. Do not tell me you have resigned yourself to it.”
“I haven’t, of course. She goes willingly, while I—”
“Willingly?” Arabella peered at her. “You haven’t read it, have you?” She pressed the page into her palm.
Jacqueline cared nothing that at least a dozen pairs of eyes were on her as she uncreased the paper and yet again forced her misery behind the blockade of pride and confidence she had erected. If they must all see her read it to be satisfied she knew the ending— the ending she had written an hour after telling Duke Tarleton that she could not marry him or any other man— then so be it.
But as her eyes scanned the words, she did not recognize them.
This was not her writing.

The king he swore in fury’s rage
His daughter would be wed
To warlike man through violent force,
And chained to mortal bed.

The princess wed; her husband learned
The secret of the portal.
With axe and club he broke it down,
Entrapping her as mortal.

The Sun Prince knew not this tragic fate;
He waited at the feast.
’Midst song and dance he watched for her,
Yet found in them no peace.

In silv’ry light he stood upon
The brook’s clear bank where once
With hands entwined they’d spoke of joy,
Yet now came still silence.

Days passed to weeks, weeks into months.
The princess did not come.
He called his heartbreak to the stars,
Beneath which they had loved.

The trees whispered his sorrow’s grief,
The Moon in solace shone,
But the prince no comfort would he take
Now his mortal maid was gone.

His beauty waned; the prince grew weak.
His golden luster faded.
For it was she who’d brought him life;
From her his beauty came.

O’er song and feast the dark night crept
Upon the desolate shore.
Then sending forth his final breath,
The Sun Prince was no more.

Jacqueline blinked, shedding a tear and marring the freshly printed ink. She swiped a finger beneath her lashes.
Before her appeared a linen kerchief. The hand that held it was masculine, strong and familiar.
She lifted her head. The Earl of Bedwyr knelt before her upon one knee. His hair was tousled, his coat wrinkled, his cravat hastily tied, and his hand extending the linen was unsteady.
His dark eyes spoke something she could not readily believe: hope.
“Princess.” His voice was rough. “Don’t let me die.”

-Jacqueline, Arabella, & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“Look at those women over there, Bella. They haven’t ceased staring at me all night. One would think they’d never seen a fictional character come to life before.”
“They and everybody else,” Arabella said impatiently. “But not for— Jackie, are you listening to me?”
“And that Baron whatever-his-name-is has winked at me six times. Six! Can you imagine? It is positively diverting.”
“Jackie, look at me.” Arabella held a cheaply printed broadsheet. “Have you read this? Part III?”
“I have. It is a very satisfying finale.”
“Satisfying?”
“Everybody ends up just as they should,” she forced herself to say.
Arabella squeezed her hand. “This is not like you, darling. He hurt you terribly, and I understand that this ending satisfies that hurt. But you cannot like the stone princess’s fate. Do not tell me you have resigned yourself to it.”
“I haven’t, of course. She goes willingly, while I—”
“Willingly?” Arabella peered at her. “You haven’t read it, have you?” She pressed the page into her palm. Jacqueline cared nothing that at least a dozen pairs of eyes were on her as she uncreased the paper and yet again forced her misery behind the blockade of pride and confidence she had erected. If they must all see her read it to be satisfied she knew the ending— the ending she had written an hour after telling Duke Tarleton that she could not marry him or any other man— then so be it.
But as her eyes scanned the words, she did not recognize them.
This was not her writing.

The king he swore in fury’s rage
His daughter would be wed
To warlike man through violent force, And chained to mortal bed.

The princess wed; her husband learned The secret of the portal.
With axe and club he broke it down, Entrapping her as mortal.

The Sun Prince knew not this tragic fate;
He waited at the feast. ’Midst song and dance he watched for her,
Yet found in them no peace.

In silv’ry light he stood upon
The brook’s clear bank where once
With hands entwined they’d spoke of joy,
Yet now came still silence.

Days passed to weeks, weeks into months.
The princess did not come.
He called his heartbreak to the stars, Beneath which they had loved.

The trees whispered his sorrow’s grief, The Moon in solace shone,
But the prince no comfort would he take Now his mortal maid was gone.

His beauty waned; the prince grew weak. His golden luster faded.
For it was she who’d brought him life; From her his beauty came.

O’er song and feast the dark night crept
Upon the desolate shore.
Then sending forth his final breath, The Sun Prince was no more.

Jacqueline blinked, shedding a tear and marring the freshly printed ink. She swiped a finger beneath her lashes.
Before her appeared a linen kerchief. The hand that held it was masculine, strong and familiar.
She lifted her head. The Earl of Bedwyr knelt before her upon one knee. His hair was tousled, his coat wrinkled, his cravat hastily tied, and his hand extending the linen was unsteady.
His dark eyes spoke something she could not readily believe: hope.
“Princess.” His voice was rough. “Don’t let me die.”

-Jacqueline, Arabella, & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“My God,” he whispered. “What I could demand of you now . . . What I could ask you to do to me, and you would allow it.”
“I would. I would do whatever you wished.” Her mouth traveled along his jaw. “But you will not ask me.”
He pulled her off him. Her eyes were half-lidded yet glimmering with awareness. “How do you know I won’t?” he demanded.
“You are the only one who understands me. You are the only one who does not judge me for what I am not, or ask of me what I am not willing to give.”
“A man with a black heart cannot very well judge a girl with a diamond soul.”
“Diamonds are cold and hard. And you are not black-hearted. You are gold.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “You are sun.”
Her diary. His poem. He didn’t know which was which now, where they ended and reality began.
“Don’t confuse what you see with what lies beneath, princess.”
“You cannot lie to me, my lord.” Her fingertips slipped over his lips, caressing so gently, so softly. “I know you.”

-Cam & Jacqueline”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“I was looking for you,” she said, curtseying.
He bowed elegantly, his dark eyes sparkling. “I could ask for no more melodious greeting.”
“Oh, I cannot sing a note.”
“I meant the words rather than the intonation.”
“I know.”
“You can’t sing?”
She lifted her brows.
“That bad, hm?” Amusement played at the corner of his mouth that had kissed her with such beauty.
“Like a raven’s caw. So, you see, my dreams of singing carols in a red gown must come to naught. Do you sing?”
He looked horrified. “Not if I don’t have to.”
“When would you have to, I wonder.”
“You would be amazed.”

-Jacqueline & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“Long ago he had stopped thinking much about the act of kissing in favor of simply employing it to his lovers’ greatest benefit, and his.
Now the princess’s innocence was his undoing.
She sought his mouth as though she were discovering a new land, eagerly yet uncertain, each brush of her untried lips against his asking him to show her the way. Allowing the tip of his tongue to trail along the seam of her mouth, he ever so gently sucked on her lower lip. Upon a sigh of wonderment, her mouth fell open. And Cam finally felt the heat inside her.
He could not halt this with a chaste kiss.”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“You will like it.” He walked toward her. “If your husband truly cares for you, you will like everything about your wifely duties to him.”
“Wifely duties.” She smiled, but the curve of her lower lip quivered. “You sound like my mother.”
“Then I should stop talking.” He closed the distance between them and took her chin between his fingers. He tilted her face up.
Her eyes were wide and abruptly wary. “I did not intend—”
He caught her open lips and held them so with his. She had a generous mouth; it fit to his perfectly. She tasted sweet, like some subtle combination of fresh herbs and honey. She remained completely still until he drew away.
“Thank you,” she said, her quick breaths stealing over his lips. “That was instructive.”
“I’m not finished.”

-Cam & Jacqueline”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“I believe there is such a man in this very parlor, your highness.” He should cut out his tongue. It was the only solution. He couldn’t very well cut off the other part of him that was rebelling from his best intentions. It was his favorite appendage.
Her black lashes made several swift beats. “You would do it? Without worrying that I would tell my brother or mother or Arabella or anybody? And without telling anyone yourself?”
“Come now. We are friends enough that I believe you know you can trust me.” Trust him to know her most fervent dreams and fantasies and not tell a soul including her? Yes, she could trust him. He was a villain. “Shall I teach you how to kiss your husband, princess?”
“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “Will I like it?”
He deserved that. “I suspect so.”

-Cam & Jacqueline”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“Both brows perked now, like the shimmering feathers of a raven. “So . . .?”
“I should think that your husband would be delighted to teach you the finer points of kissing.” And learn a thing or two in the process.
“I suppose you may be correct about that. Men like to instruct women. I think it makes them feel more in control.”
He could not hide his amusement. “You don’t say?”
“Well, doesn’t it? You are a man.”
“Good of you to notice.”
“Do you like it when you feel in control of a woman?”
“I like it when a woman feels she is getting what she wants from me.”

-Jacqueline & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“Good day, my lord. What brings you here today?”
He made a show of glancing curiously about the chamber. “Empty, your highness? In the absence of your brother and the queen, is your butler instructed to turn away all rogues and scoundrels except me?”
“Oh, no,” she said with a light wave of her hand. “All the other rogues and scoundrels have made appointments for later. You are simply early.”

-Jacqueline & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“Cam?” Luc stood at the top of the stairs. “Why are you standing there staring at the door?” He started down the steps. “You look wretched.”
“Thanks, coz. I feel splendid. By the by, that scar across your face is dreadfully red lately. Might want to consider a larger piece of fabric to conceal it. Or perhaps a bag to cover the entire head.”
Luc leveled an implacable stare. “I assume you have come here with a purpose?”
“I may be reconsidering that.”

-Luc & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“the long and the short of it was that he simply wanted to take her to bed for a good, hot satisfying fuck that would render her fantasies tame in comparison.
He stood in the middle of his study, both hands sunk in his hair, and groaned long and loud.
He covered his eyes with his palms. No. No no no. She was his Muse, for God’s sake. He could not degrade her so. His cock was an unbridled beast, but he was a man of at least some remnants of honor.

-Cam's thoughts”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“He wanted to pleasure her. In all ways.
He wanted to make her smile and laugh and cry out in blind ecstasy.
He wanted to actually take her virginity, to give her the greatest gift he knew and to watch her face as she discovered the miracle that he’d long since taken for granted.
He wanted to be her first, the god she imagined him to be.

-Cam's thoughts”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“I don’t suppose you will ever be at liberty to say, will you?”
“Probably not. But, my dear, this is a dreadfully dull topic, don’t you agree? Tell me, instead, what have you been reading of late? Have you allowed the frippery fashions of London society to influence you? Do you now fill your hours with cheap comedies and gothic horrors, obliging me to admit myself sorely disappointed in your good sense?”

-Jacqueline & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“Good morning, princess. I am astonished to see you abroad at such an hour. Didn’t you dance holes through your slippers last night?”
“But you are here as well. I could ask the same of you.”
“I don’t wear slippers, of course.” He leaned in and whispered, “Not nearly manly enough.”

-Cam & Jacqueline”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“Your highness,” he said below the burble of conversations. “You have just snubbed the Baroness of Crawford.”
“Have I?” Her fine eyes were alight and her mouth offered him the smile he found himself wishing she reserved for him alone. “I must be terribly rude.”
“On her afternoon calls tomorrow she will undoubtedly inform her every acquaintance of your outrageous foreign snobbery.”
“She did not notice I passed. None of them ever do.”
“Why—”
“Oh, let’s not talk about that,” she said hurriedly. “Tell me what you wished to speak with me about.”
“Did I?”
“Of course you did. You were staring at me from all the way across the room.” Her tongue was sweet and gentle over the harsh Saxon syllables of his native language.
She wrote in French, the language most of her people adopted at birth— though Cam had learned from her diary that the Sensaire dialect was, in some instances, quite a different thing indeed. He wished he knew the endearments she spoke to her fantasy version of him.
“I thought it rather the opposite,” he said honestly.
“Oh, it could not have been, my lord. Princesses do not stare.”
He glanced aside. “Only queens, I suppose.”
She shifted her attention to her mother and released a short breath of frustration.
“Daggers, as they say,” he murmured.
“Daggers indeed.”
“She doesn’t like it when I speak with you, does she?” he said because he knew it to be true, and justifiably so. If Claire were eight years older, he wouldn’t like her talking to a man like him either.
“No. She does not. But I do.” She seemed to study him. Her lips parted, then closed abruptly.
“Your highness?” he said quietly.
“Sometimes,” she said upon a rush of air, “I wish that I were an entirely different person and not a princess at all.”
He watched her eyes, wide and without any hint of spoiled complaint in them. “Do you?”
“Yes. For instance, I wish that I were standing here wearing a shockingly red satin gown and singing Christmas carols at the top of my lungs.”
He chuckled. “Do you like singing, princess?”
“Singing?” Twin creases appeared between her brows. “What about the red gown? Shouldn’t you ask me about that first?”
“Probably. But since I should like to see you wearing a shockingly red satin gown, it wasn’t my principal curiosity.”
Her mouth split into a perfect smile.
“Now you’ve done it,” he said. “Your mother will have you cleaning the floors in punishment for that grin.”
Candlelight twinkled in her eyes. “Princesses do not grin, my lord.”
“Perhaps not. But they smile beautifully.”

-Cam & Jacqueline”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“What is Tarleton doing here?” Cam stood beside his cousin at the door to the drawing room, glasses of port they’d brought from the dining room in hand. “Don’t recall him being a regular at this sort of party.”
“Reiner’s been spending time with him lately,” Luc said. “Must be some business of state.”
“Dry-as-bones political type, is he?”
“You would know if you ever took your seat in Lords, Cam.”
“Don’t even think of lecturing me, Captain.”
“I have only just succeeded to the peerage.”
“After a decade trying to avoid that fate upon the sea.” Cam sipped his wine.
“You have held your title for years, wastrel.”
“Sticks and stones, coz.”

-Cam & Luc”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“My lord.” The air in her lungs was remarkably short. “You seek to flatter but you fall short of the mark.”
“Do I?” he frowned. “But I speak honestly.”
“I am not accustomed to such honesty, if honesty it is.”
“Why not? Has no gentleman ever before admitted that you intrigue him?”
“No.” This hurt, though she didn’t know why it should. “For no such gentleman has ever existed.”
“He does now.” He smiled.
It was the oddest thing, that smile, not like his charming grins but sincere, as though he were not in fact teasing her.
He offered his arm. “Come now, intriguing lady, and offer your opinion on these bookends.” He drew her toward the shop window. “I cannot guess what sort of book my valet would like to read, but every man needs a pair of solid brass bookends. If Simms doesn’t use them for books, he might instead quash me over the head with them and be rid of me once and for all.”
“Mm,” she managed. “You are that difficult a master?”
His warm eyes sparkled. “Only when I haven’t the desire to please.” He lifted her hand and kissed her gloved fingertips. “Only then, your highness.”

-Jacqueline & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“It is the quiet ladies, you see, who present the greatest mystery and therefore are the most interesting. Indeed, the most intriguing.”

-Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“Whist?” she managed. “With my mother?”
“It seems she wishes to be a card sharp upon her entrance into English society, and as the resident gambler here, I am to instruct her.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Do you impugn my integrity, your highness?”
“I don’t. I don’t believe you have any integrity to be impugned.” She said it lightly.
“Clever girl,” he said with a knowing, sideways glance at her that tore her breath from her lungs. “Very clever girl.”

-Jacqueline & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“In your poem, did a prince rescue the princess?”
“No, in fact,” he said, his gaze quite fixed in hers, like on that rainy day in the corridor. “Not yet, at least.”

-Jacqueline & Cam”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“As an avid reader, tell me,” he said, “are you ever moved to turn your hand to writing?”
“Writing?” she said upon a gurgle.
“Writing.”
Of all questions, how could he ask this?
“I don’t know why I should tell you anything about myself.”
“Whyever not?”
“You called me a porridge.”
“Do you mind it much?”
“Yes.” Her lips twitched. She turned her face away. “Not so much.”
“Not at all, I suspect.”
She pinned him with what she hoped was a hard stare. “How can you claim to suspect anything about me?”
He did not immediately reply. “Would you believe a little bird told me?”
“I shan’t call you incorrigible, my lord, for I guess you have been called that before—”
“From the time I was in short-pants.”
“— and my chastisement should fail from banality.”
“Never.”
“And I shan’t gape at your inappropriate familiarities, for I think that would only make you say more to try to shock me.”
“Probably.”
He folded his hands across the low pommel of the saddle, waiting, she realized, his gaze upon her warm with amused interest. “Oh.” She was a wretched liar; he would see it in her face. “Yes, of course I write.”

-Cam & Jacqueline”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“What an agreeable tendency we seem to have of ignoring each other’s questions,” he said, his eyes hooding.
The breeze ruffled the locks of hair at his collar. She could feel them, silk and warmth, between her fingers. She had felt them night after night in her dreams.
“Do you think we will ever communicate anything of substance to each other if we go on in this cryptic fashion?” he said, studying her again, but a grin had settled in the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t know,” she said, holding her breath as if that would contain the quivering inside her. “Perhaps we could give it a try now.”
“Splendid.” He bowed. “Ladies first, of course.”

-Cam & Jacqueline”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“Ah, women. At once, the most painfully obvious and delectably mysterious creatures on earth.

-Cam's thoughts”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“If pleasure could be had only through fiction, then she would happily dream.

-Jacqueline's thoughts”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“At twenty, Jacqueline was already years past the age she should have wed. But she and her brother enjoyed each other’s company and he had not yet himself thought to marry. Now their mother was making her intentions clear: by year’s end Jacqueline must marry a man of Reiner’s choosing. In England he would arrange a match for her.
Despite the close friendship of a decade, he had never once mentioned the Earl of Bedwyr as a candidate. “A man may esteem another as a friend,” he’d said to her after the earl’s arrival at the chateau, “without wishing to curse his sister with him as a husband.”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote

“He folded the diary closed and considered.
It would be the height of dishonorableness to continue reading. The princess deserved her privacy. Merely because she was writing about him gave him no right to read it.
On the other hand, weren’t ladies supposed to keep their diaries hidden beneath pillows or locked in dressing tables?
A girl silly enough to leave her private thoughts displayed so blatantly in a plain notebook tucked snugly in the back of an undistinguished piece of furniture in the corner of an out-of-the-way parlor frequented only by her closest female companions deserved to have her privacy invaded.
He continued to invade.”
― Katharine Ashe, Kisses, She Wrote