“More meat on that than on yon wee lizard there, aye?” Ian took the spear, pulled the fish off, and bashed its head with the hilt of his knife to kill it.
Everyone looked, but the alligator had departed, alarmed by the kerfuffle.
“Aye, that’s us fettled, I think.” Jamie picked up both bags—one half full of bullfrogs, and the other still squirming slightly from the inclusion of a number of shrimp and crayfish netted from the shallows. He held open the one with the frogs for Ian to toss the fish inside, saying a verse from the Hunting Blessing, for Germain: “Thou shalt not eat fallen fish nor fallen flesh/ Nor one bird that thy hand shall not bring down/Be thou thankful for the one/ Though nine should be swimming.”
Germain was not paying attention, though; he was standing quite still, fair hair lifting in the breeze, his head turned.
“Look, Grand-père,” he said, voice urgent. “Look!”
They all looked and saw the ships, far out beyond the marsh but coming in, heading for the small headland to the south. Seven, eight, nine . . . a dozen at least, with red lanterns at their masts, blue ones at the stern. Jamie felt the hair rise on his body and his blood go cold.
“British men-of-war,” Fergus said, his voice empty with shock.
“They are,” Jamie said. “We’d best get home.”
IT WAS ALMOST dawn before I felt Jamie slide into bed behind me, bringing chilled skin and the smell of brine, cold mud, and marsh plants with him. Also . . .
“What’s that smell?” I asked drowsily, kissing the arm he’d put round me.
“Frogs, I expect. God, ye’re warm, Sassenach.” He cuddled closer, pressing his body into mine, and I felt him pull loose the bow of the ribbon that gathered the neck of my shift.
“Good hunting, then?” I obligingly wiggled my bottom into the hollow of his thighs and he sighed in appreciation, his breath warm on my ear, and slipped a cold hand inside my shift. “Ooh.”
“Aye. Germain caught a fine big catfish, and we brought back a sack of crawfish and shrimps—the wee gray ones.”
“Mmm. We’ll have a good supper, then.” His temperature was quickly equalizing with mine, and I was drifting pleasantly back down toward sleep—though quite willing to be roused for the right reasons.
“We saw a wee alligator. And a snake—a water moccasin.”
“You didn’t catch those, I hope.” I knew that snakes and alligators were technically edible, but I didn’t think we were quite hungry enough to make the challenges of cooking one worthwhile.
“No. Oh—and a dozen British ships full of soldiers turned up, too.”
“That’s ni—What?” I flipped over in his arms, ending face-to-face.
“British soldiers,” he repeated gently. “Dinna fash, Sassenach. I expect it will be all right. Fergus and I already hid the press, and we havena got any silver to bury. That’s one thing to be said for poverty,” he added reflectively, stroking my bottom. “Ye dinna need to fear bein’ plundered.”
“That—what the bloody hell are they doing here?” I rolled over and sat straight up in bed, pulling my shift up round my shoulders.
“Well, ye did say Pardloe told ye they meant to cut off the southern colonies, aye? I imagine they decided to start here.”
“Why here? Why not . . . Charleston? Or Norfolk?”
“Well, I couldna say, not being privy to the British councils of war,” he said mildly. “But if I was to guess, I’d say it’s maybe that there are a good many troops already in Florida, and they’ll be marching up to join this new lot. The Loyalists are thick as fleas on a dog all along the coast of the Carolinas; if the army’s secured Florida and Georgia, they’d be well placed to advance northward, picking up local support.”
“You have it all figured out, I see.” I pressed my back against the wall—there was no headboard—and finished retying the ribbon of my shift. I didn’t feel equal to meeting an invasion with my bosom uncovered.
“No,” he admitted. “But there are only two things to do, Sassenach: stay or flee. It’s the dead of winter in the mountains; we canna get through the passes ’til March, and I’d rather not be stravaiging about the countryside with three bairns, two pregnant women, and nay money. And I doubt they’ll burn the city, not if they mean it to be a base for invading the rest of the South.” He reached up and ran a soothing hand down my shoulder and arm. “It’s not as though ye’ve not lived in an occupied city before.”
“Hmm,” I said dubiously, but he did have a point. There were some advantages to the situation, the chief one being that if an army already held a city, they wouldn’t be attacking it: no fighting in the streets. But, then . . . they didn’t hold it yet.
“Dinna fash yourself, lass,” he said softly, and twined a finger in my ribbon. “Did I not tell ye when we wed, ye’d have the protection of my body?”
“You did,” I admitted, and laid a hand over his. It was big, strong, and capable.
“Then come lie wi’ me, mo nighean donn, and let me prove it,” he said, and pulled the ribbon loose.
FROG LEGS OF that size really did look quite like chicken drumsticks. And tasted very like, too, dredged in flour and egg with a little salt and pepper and fried.
“Why is it that the meat of strange animals is so often described as tasting like chicken?” Rachel asked, neatly snaring another leg out from under her husband’s reaching hand. “I’ve heard people say that of everything from catamount to alligator.”