Her Dear and Loving Husband (17 page)

“‘Quite good,’ Mr. Smithers said, nodding in appreciation.

“‘The finest you’ll find anywhere,’ my father said.”

Sarah laughed at the image of James spilling hot liquid over the poor, unsuspecting man.

“Was your father very angry?”

“Not at all. After the man made his purchase and left—fortunately he was a good-humored fellow who didn’t hold my ungraceful maneuver against us—my father prodded my feelings from me.

“‘Are you well, Son?’ he asked. He smiled as I sat behind my desk, a feather quill listless in my hand. ‘You’re wearing your spectacles so I reckon you can see well enough. What ails you?’ 

“I hardly heard his questions while I stared with confused eyes out the window at the passing horse-drawn carts. I knew I was supposed to be doing something, but I couldn’t remember what that might be. Then I remembered my task, calculating figures from our latest importing venture. I attempted to work, but I couldn’t remember anything about how to add or subtract numbers. Did three come before or after four?      

“My father crossed his arms in front of his chest as he watched me, his knowing smile relaxing into an impish grin. 

“‘Your distraction wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain Miss Elizabeth Jones, now, would it?’ 

“I sighed as I looked at him. ‘‘Tis that obvious?’ I asked. 

“‘Tis obvious in certain ways. I’ve seen how you go out of your way to cross paths with her, how you gaze at her in church when your head should be bowed in prayer, how you’ve been slack with your duties here. And, well, at the moment your garters are undone.’ 

“I saw that my garters were indeed undone and my white cotton stockings were hanging uselessly down my legs. My father laughed as I bent to fasten my straps.   

“‘Now when should I go?’ he asked.

“‘Go? Where?’

“‘To speak to Mr. Jones. You want Elizabeth’s hand, do you not?’

“‘Aye!’ I spoke with such excitement my face flushed.

“My father laughed again. ‘Then you shall have it. I’ll speak to Mr. Jones directly.’

“‘You’ll go this day?’

“‘This moment. And you needn’t thank me since ‘tis for me as well as you. I can tell by the folly in your manner you’re not likely to complete your tasks here lest I secure her hand for you.’ 

“‘What if she won’t have me?’ I asked.

“‘Won’t have you? Of course she’ll have you. You’re a good boy, James, patient, kind, even-tempered. And handsome too. Thank God you took after your mother. Besides, I believe the feeling is mutual. I’ve seen her on the other side of the aisle in church staring back at you when she should have been praying as well.’ My father tapped the desk in front of me with his hand. ‘Don’t worry, Son. I shan’t take no for an answer.’ 

“My father told me afterwards that he talked me up as the heir to his prosperous merchant trade, a business that often took him to exotic ports around the world. He explained how I knew all manners of the business, and I was indispensable as a son and friend. 

“‘There is no better young man than my James,’ my father told Mr. Jones. ‘My son was educated at Cambridge. I had no choice but to send him to university, you see. He seems to have been born with his nose sewn into bookbinding. Always reading. Always learning. He wishes to be a professor at university, but he’s a fine son, biding his time helping his old father with business now.’”

“You knew even then you wanted to teach,” Sarah said. “You haven’t changed.” 

“In some ways I haven’t changed at all. In other ways I hardly recognize myself.”

“I haven’t had the same transformation as you,” Sarah said, “but I understand what you mean. I feel so different now than I did when I was living in Los Angeles. I feel like the light has been switched on.”

James smiled, and she felt the heat lick her cheeks pink.

“So Mr. Jones accepted your offer?” she asked.

“It didn’t take much persuasion. My father said Mr. Jones seemed inclined to accept me right away. After all, my father was one of the wealthiest men in England, let alone the colonies. He explained to Mr. Jones that I had some savings of my own, and he assured him that, should it be agreed Elizabeth and I were to be betrothed, he would gladly buy us some land and build us one of the grandest houses in Salem Town.”

“Salem Town?”

“It was divided into Salem Town and Salem Village then. Mr. Jones said it was the best offer he had had for Elizabeth all year. He even told my father he had been worried since she was heading past marriageable age, at twenty-two. He was afraid she would never marry because she was a stubborn girl who had refused two previous offers. 

“‘If your boy wants her, and she’s agreeable, then 'tis all well enough by me,’ Mr. Jones said. He told my father that he had promised his wife that he would never force his daughters to marry someone they were not inclined toward. Fortunately for me the feeling was mutual, as my father predicted. I remember the day I told him to hire the sawyers and the carpenters to build our new house. I knew Elizabeth would be my wife, and I wanted to get our home ready for our life together.

“I didn’t tell Elizabeth the house was being built, and the carpenters worked quickly. The day the last peg was hammered into the wood my father and I brought her to see it for the first time. She gasped out loud when she saw it. 

“‘Tis beautiful, James,’ she said. ‘Tis the grandest house in Salem Town.’ She walked to the front door, touched the latchkey, and looked through the diamond-paned window to the furnished room inside. ‘Whose is it?’

“‘Tis yours,’ I said, ‘if you want it to be.’ 

“There we were, standing in front of the house while my father waited inside, and I asked her to be my wife. I knew it had all been agreed upon before, but I wanted to hear her response with my own ears.” 

“Were you very happy together?”

“Happier than I thought I had any right to be.”

James looked at Sarah. He leaned so close their heads touched. His dark eyes penetrated her, reached inside her, as if he were grasping for something. She felt the way she did the night she first saw him when he had mistaken her for his wife—disjointed and confused. The more he looked into her, though, the more there was something there, some semblance of a dream, or was it a memory, she couldn’t tell. The feeling disappeared as soon as it came on, and then she became fidgety, her fingernails tapping a worried rhythm against the side of the chair. He must have sensed her discomfort because he turned away. 

“We were married in late 1691,” he said. “I don’t remember much about our wedding ceremony except a yearning impatience to be alone with her. I remember the feast my father paid for, set out for our guests like a king’s ransom waiting to be plundered. I remember the magistrate mumbling something. After the ceremony was over and our guests were well satiated, my father walked my bride and me to our new home. He came into the house with us, which surprised me, and he took great pleasure showing Elizabeth how he completed the home for us with the finest furniture the best carpenters in Salem Town could build. He even had a few pieces, including the blue and white hand-painted Delft dishware, imported from Holland. When he finally left (it took a few pointed stares from me before he understood) I was alone with my wife for the first time.”

Sarah felt his body curving around hers, and she leaned into him. She couldn’t get close enough. She felt his hands in her hair, his lips on the back of her neck. She wanted him, there was no denying that, but he had just been talking about being alone with Elizabeth for the first time. Sarah knew she looked like Elizabeth, and her desire for him was tempered by the fact that, if they did make love that night, who would James really be with? Her? Elizabeth? Sarah sighed. Here they were, finally close, and he had been speaking about being alone with his wife. She began to wonder if they had a chance after all.

James brought her home. He was distracted with his own thoughts and didn’t speak at all on the drive. She thought she saw concern in his eyes, and she wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was—maybe the fact that she looked like his wife was going to keep them apart.

As she got ready for bed she had her moments when it seemed like a trick, the idea that James was anything other than human. There are yogis who can stop their breath or slow their heartbeats for a dangerous amount of time. Maybe James had learned to do that. But what would be the point of such a trick? He was pale, but being pale doesn’t mean you’re dead, so she tried to be logical about it. Had she ever seen anyone else with skin like the light of the moon, so white it looked vein blue or translucent gray? Whenever he touched her she noticed that he felt cooler than she did, but did he feel as cold as a dead body? She had never touched a dead body before so she didn’t know. His hair was gold but his eyes were night-sky black, an unnerving contrast to the blue she still expected them to be. Aren’t vampires walking corpses with pointed ears, hideous leers, and sharp fangs that pierce you until you die? Don’t they flutter as bats outside your window and drink your blood while you sleep? But she had felt his still chest, twice, heard the silence inside, and in the end that was all the proof she needed. She fell asleep dreaming about when she would see him again, hoping that his dead wife would stop being a barrier between them. She only had one nightmare that night that woke her up cold and afraid, and it wasn’t a nightmare about vampires but a terror about a prison that looked and sounded too real.

Though I am too weak to see clearly I know I am locked in a dank, gloomy dungeon infested with rats. I can hear the faint cries of the other women in the cages around me. The dim candlelight is flickering demons, there are the real demons I want to cry, not us, there they are in the shadows on the walls. I am so ill I am delirious, barely conscious or alive. I feel the blood on my legs from the scraping of the iron chains around my ankles, an extra precaution, they said, to prevent my specter from vanishing through the walls. As if chains could prevent a real specter from doing anything it wanted. The women surrounding me are groaning, or scratching their itching skin, or reading the Bible, or praying softly, hoping God could hear them even there.

I am in hell. I am waiting for someone, anyone, to realize this mistake. I should be home with my husband. We shall have our baby soon. I try to speak but only spittle escapes my cracked lips. I close my eyes and know I am dying, my baby dying with me. I let the tears flow freely because I think I shall never see my beloved again, and I know how devastated he shall be when he learns that I left him though I promised I would never leave him ever. I know he has been outside the jail doing everything he can to get me out. I feel his agony. I know his body shudders in pain like a knife blade ripping his skin. With my last strength I press my hands against the wall and whisper “I love you” to my husband. And then nothing. I am gone…   

CHAPTER 14

When James arrived home he locked himself into his house, lit a single candle, sat at the table, and stared at the cauldron in the hearth. So much about that house hadn’t changed in over three hundred years. He looked at the seventeenth-century furniture, his vast collection of books, the peaked roof ending in two points overhead. He shut his eyes so tightly it hurt. He was trying to summon Elizabeth, begging to see her, wanting to feel her in his arms again. Sarah was so like Elizabeth, and yet she was also her own woman. Again, the problem of wanting to be with Sarah and feeling Elizabeth so strongly the two became confused. He could sense that Sarah felt it that night too. He had wanted her, and she had wanted him. He knew it from the softness in her eyes, from the way she pressed her warm curves against him, yet the ghost of his wife stood squarely between them, arms out like a boxing referee, separating them and keeping them apart. He was mad with desire for Sarah, but he didn’t know what to do about Elizabeth.

His thoughts turned back to his wedding night. After his father had left, Elizabeth was standing by the wall along the back of the great room staring at that very cauldron in the hearth. Though he had been dreaming of being alone with her from the first time he saw her, he was shy and tongue-tied suddenly and didn’t know what to say. He stood mutely, waiting for her to speak, but she was feeling shy, too, and she pretended not to notice him standing there. Then he felt the absurdity of the situation—they were husband and wife now, he thought, there’s no reason to be shy with each other. He laughed, and she did too, smiling that smile he loved so much. All of a sudden his life made sense to him. This was where he was supposed to be, and there was no one else in the world for him to be with. 

He removed his hat and cloak, walked to her, and stood as close as he dared. She looked up at him but shyness overcame her again and she turned away. He tilted her chin with his hand and caressed her cheek until they both exhaled. When she looked at him with the same longing he had felt for her he couldn’t hold back any more. He kissed her, first gently on her temple, then her cheek, then her lips. When she kissed him back with as much yearning as he felt the passion overtook them and he carried her to bed. He thought she would be self-conscious when he undressed her, but she wasn’t, which was good because it took some time. He left her coif, the white cap she wore tied over her hair, and her brown silk outer gown to her to remove. Then he had to make his way through her underpants, stockings, petticoat, chemise, bolster—a padded roll she wore tied around her hips under her gathered skirt—and her bodice. They were easy about it and laughed because it was funny, an erotic comedy of manners as he fumbled with the ties and fastenings of his wife’s clothing and tried not to appear too greedy to get to her bare flesh beneath. But she wanted him as much as he wanted her and she waited patiently, often with amusement, and finally she was free from the constraints. The first time he made love to Elizabeth had none of the awkwardness of two virgins fumbling their way through a blind, impetuous maze. His hands knew where to caress her. She knew where to stroke him. Somehow, he knew that she loved to be kissed on the nape of her neck and he lingered there. Instinctively, they understood each other and knew how to be together.