hey y’all I finally posted some Frontier fic
go read it on AO3. Full of timeline disparities and historical inaccuracies!
EDIT 2/4/23: NOW WITH AUDIO HERE!
The fire was still lit, roaring in the hearth, the wood crackling splendidly within the flames. Heat poured out from the blaze, and Grace allowed herself a moment more of pleasure warming her hands before her eyes narrowed with suspicion. Jonathan had not appeared yet, which meant he had either given up the ghost and fallen asleep, or he was still plotting. Her demise, perhaps – or, worse, of those his men had taken into custody.
But, surely, if these captives had anything to do with Harp, Chesterfield would have been down at the ale house with bells on, unable to suppress his smug satisfaction at her dismay. No fever would have stopped that man’s irrepressible compulsion to gloat at his achievements, no matter how arbitrary or how cruel.
Or, said the voice in her head, unbidden, maybe it would have, if the fever was bad enough.
She recalled one of the trappers at the ale regaling his comrades with a repulsive tale of yellow fever among one of the First Nations tribes. The jaundice, and the bile, and the blood – of the way the natives had cried out in their mother tongues, senseless with fever, until no more sound came from their burning bodies. The French had ordered the corpses burned, to quell the risk of contamination, and the task was apparently carried out easily despite the absence of a priest to perform any last rites.
A chill swept through Grace, one that she was sure had not come from any draft.
