I’m sure at this point Loving Husband Trilogy fans have put Down Salem Way into a category with Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, and other urban legends: people want to believe in it yet no one’s actually seen it, so maybe it doesn’t exist after all.

Rest assured, the new James and Elizabeth story is right on schedule (maybe on schedule isn’t quite the way to put it since many of you have been waiting awhile now). The novel will be available for preorder on Friday, April 19, 2019. Yes, you read that correctly–the new Loving Husband story will be available for preorder on James’ birthday.

I’ll have more to say about Down Salem Way soon. To keep us all going, here is the first snippet from Down Salem Way. Enjoy.

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10 January 1691

Monday

The winters are colder here, I am sure of it. My father and I arrived here, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but a year ago during what we were assured was one of the harshest winters in memory, and I can feel it so in my bones, which feel bitter, as though they will shatter like icicles against a hammer. While England grows cold enough in the sunless months, in New England tis as though the sky disappears beneath a flat woolen blanket. I cannot step one foot outside my home without feeling liquid ice in my veins instead of warm blood, but that is life in Massachusetts in January. The sky looks nearly as it does in England, gradations of gray from near-black to tinder-slate that shed wind, sleet, or snow depending on its mood, but home, in London, but three decades past the Great Fire, there are more people, more public houses, more ways to deal with the discomforts. Here there is no warmth to be found, outside my home, at least, for inside my home dwells my Elizabeth. Outside, I shiver in an unkind howling wind. Inside, I find comfort of every kind.

This morn my father expected me to meet him by the bay, which I did, dutifully. He wished to inspect the shipbuilders as they banged out the hull of his latest vessel, The Elizabeth, named for my wife. Lizzie laughed at me as I piled on layers of clothing in my meager attempt to stay warm: my woolen flannel underdrawers, my linen shirt, my thickest worsted woolen leggings, perhaps not the most fashionable, but they are my warmest; my woolen suit of doublet, jerkin, and breeches, and my heavy, fulled woolen coat, the deep blue one that Lizzie says matches my eyes, though what matters my eyes when I cannot see afore me for the blizzard. Lizzie made certain I looked the part of a gentleman before I left the house, knotting my cravat tightly near my throat in an effort to keep whatever body warmth I might take with me as close as I can for as long as possible, making sure I wore the matching vest and leggings in the same dark, heavy wool of my great coat. I took the coat with the collar and a cape over the shoulders, the one that fell past my knees. I would cover myself in ten such coats if I could manage to do so without looking ridiculous. Even as I was, my wife could not stifle her giggles. 

“Good heavens, James,” she said. “You look like a blue onion ready for the peeling.” 

“And shall you peel my layers away?” I asked. She blushed in that way I love, red-hot along her jaw. She pushed me toward the door as though she could not be rid of me soon enough. 

“Perhaps when you return home,” she said. “If you’re lucky.”

I pulled my dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty closer to me and basked in her warmth. I ran my lips along the red that stained her cheeks. “I have been lucky thus far,” I said. “I cannot see that my luck will not continue.”

Lizzie pulled my great coat closer around my neck. She opened the door and pushed me toward it. She shivered in the cold, kissed my lips, then pressed me outside.

“Go,” she said. “Father is waiting for you.”

“Will you wait for me?” I asked. 

“Where else shall I be?” She smiled that smile I long to see. We have been married but this one month and already her smile is the light of my life. “I shall be here, at home, waiting for my handsome husband. What other man might I wait for who is tall and strong with hair the color of spun gold and eyes like the bluest, brightest jewels?”

I took a step further into the unfriendly gloom and heard the door close behind me. I sighed, knowing that I had lost the battle to my Lizzie, which is as it usually goes. That, as my father says, is being a good husband, though there are many who believe tis the man’s right to dictate. My father does not agree. 

“We Wentworth men are easily led astray by the love of a beautiful woman,” my father likes to say. “You have been, as I was by your mother, as my father was by my mother. Tis a weakness some say. I say we have gained far more than we have lost.” 

I quivered in my boots as I walked, leaving behind the woman who has not led me astray at all but who has shown me, each day since we have been married, what a joy life could be. I did not know what it meant to wake up smiling each morn until I married my Lizzie. I warmed my mind with thoughts of my beautiful wife, her wondering dark eyes, her curl-filled dark hair, her luscious, berry-like lips.

Alas, though my mind was content, my body was not as I slid across the frigid ground. I did not have far to walk, but it was far enough. This home, the one I share with my wife, is one of the larger houses in the Town, not far from the bay where my father waited. I looked for something to occupy my mind besides my wife but saw nothing. I am still struck by how sparse it is in Massachusetts. Unfriendly. Uninhabitable. 

“They call this a town?” I said aloud, to no one. Being from London, I struggle to think of this place as a town. And it becomes even more provincial at the Farms. The Town grows a little livelier toward the harbor since it is the hub for shipbuilding and the merchant trade.

“Is this all there is?” I said, again to no one. I thought I heard the caw of a seagull, then doubted myself since even seabirds knew to stay away from the shore on such days. There’s so little of everything, and tis still a shock to walk amongst nothing but seashore to one side of me, farmland on the other, and wilderness further back. I am surrounded by more trees than people. Though for someone such as I, who prefers the company of books, perhaps tis not such a terrible thing so long as I have my wife beside me.  

I must have shaken myself as far as the sea, for finally I stood near the edge of the gray-black bay, the tips of my boots licked by the lapping waves, my toes curling, the ocean spray splattering my exposed face with bitter water like pin pricks along my cheeks. The wind licked my lips raw, and I pulled my fur collar closer around my ears, my hair matted with wet, and I found myself thinking again that the cold in England wasn’t ever this cold. I squinted into the expanse of the water stretching far and away across the ocean, and I slapped my own forehead when I realized that I left my spectacles on the table near my bed. What a confounded fool I can be, I thought. How will I get through the day without my spectacles? Twas an excuse to return home, I knew, to the warmth of my hearth, and my Lizzie. But my father was waiting for me, and I do not like to disappoint him. I decided that if I concentrated hard enough, so that my temples squeezed and my brain pinched, I could see well enough. If I pinched my brain that much tigher, I thought I could see all the way past the ocean to England, and home.

I wish I could take my Lizzie, hire one of my father’s ships, and go back to England, to where I am comfortable, to family and friends and others I have known my whole life, where I could return to my studies and the work I was meant to do. This merchant life does not come naturally to me. It never has. Tis my father with the business sense, my father who can talk to anyone, buy anyone a round at the public house, my father who understands how to get what he needs with a smile or a laugh. But one day. One day I will take my Lizzie home. I will stay a while yet to help my father settle his business ventures, and then my wife and I shall go. In England, I felt my life had purpose. In Massachusetts, nothing has purpose. Except for Lizzie. Everything makes sense when I am with Lizzie. 

I was brought back to myself by a spray of salty ocean water. The air was even colder standing at land’s end, if that were possible. The men mulling about pulled their knitted woolen caps closer over their ears and their woolen coats and scarves closer to their chins to keep out the poking wicked wind. I focused on the horizon where the gray of the sky met the black of the sea, making the distance disappear. With my hat pulled over my eyes and my downward stance, I walked into a man who must have been a shipbuilder since that was the only trade happening on the docks. The man’s Monmouth cap fell to the ground, his leather pouch flung from his shoulder, and he grimaced with severity.

“My apologies,” I said. “I did not see you there.”

“Blind, are you?” The man spat in my direction. “A Pox on you!” The man skittered toward the sea, his gray doublet and breeches blending into the slate of sea and sky, gone from sight as quickly as he appeared. I laughed to myself as I thought, indeed, I am blind. I cannot see my own hand before my face without my spectacles, which are at home with my Lizzie where it is warm, where she is warm, her embrace and her soft body warm, and I am stuck here along an unforgiving shore being whipped by the angry weather like a thief in the stocks. I sighed, resigning myself to the fact that the wind would have its way with me. I squinted into the distance, struggling to make out the short, slight shape of my father. When I arrived at the dock I had a sudden fright brought on by one word: “Pox.”

I thought there must be someone there, but even with my poor eyesight I saw I stood alone. Then I recalled where I heard the word—the man I stepped on had cursed me with it. I did not need that ill-tempered man to remind me of the fear of the Pox running along the Salem shore. There has been another outbreak, and those living closest to the port suffer. Once again I was reminded that I would rather be sitting in my cushioned chair before my hearth reading Samuel Pepys’ Memoirs of the Navy with Lizzie sitting beside me knitting, mending, or simply chatting to me about her day. I pulled my coat closer to my mouth, as though the meager movement would keep the Pox where it belonged, over there, away from me and mine. I arrived near the shipbuilders, hammering nails into wood until I thought my head would burst into a star-like pattern. With some effort, I made out a vague outline of men and guessed my father was among them.

To be continued…