Outlander Book Club: Book 1, Chapter 21 breakdown

Just the Outlander chapter

We pick up with Claire in Black Jack Randall’s office. Her outer layers had dried after landing in the river, but her undercoats are still wet. However, she doesn’t think too much about that as she takes in the sight of the office. She notes that it’s well decorated, which hints at money.

While Black Jack Randall threatens her, Claire needs to think of a way to stall things and protect herself. After all, Randall refuses to send word to Dougal that she’s been captured. It doesn’t matter that the MacKenzies are powerful. He has Claire and he wants to find out her secrets.

At this point, we learn his theories about who she is. He thinks she’s a French spy, which does make sense. She speaks French well and she keeps talking about wanting to get to family in France. It would suggest that France is where she’s come from. But Randall has other plans. He’s going to take her to Edinburgh, and she knows that if she heads there, she’s never getting back to the stones.

So, she figures another way to protect herself. She vaguely remembers the Duke of Sandringham being mentioned, so uses that name. Without mentioning it, she suggests that she is also working for Sandringham, but Randall is surprised at that. He doesn’t want to believe it’s true, but part of him clearly believes her.

The “discussions” lead to Randall attempting to rape Claire, but he can’t perform. Claire realizes that he needs Claire to be afraid and scream. That’s what he enjoys, and she refuses to give it to him.

While at this point she doesn’t think Jamie and Dougal will come for her, Jamie appears in the window. We get that brilliant line of “I’ll thank ye to take your hands off my wife.” This is the moment that Randall learns that Claire has married the one man that got away from Randall. The game has become much better for him but first he needs to deal with Jamie and the pistol.

Of course, the pistol isn’t loaded. Randall quickly finds that out when he convinces Jamie to handover the pistol and shoots at him. Jamie had bluffed his way in, but it was enough to get Claire back and escape.

That’s when we get the argument between Claire and Jamie. It turns out that Jamie had seen sense and set a man back to protect Claire. That man had seen Claire taken by the English soldiers. Dougal would have thought Claire was a spy but the man mentions Claire was struggling. Jamie needed to get Claire back, so formed a plan to do it.

Jamie is clearly angry. If Claire had remained where he told her, she would have been safe. It may be victim-blaming, but he does have a point. Claire did put herself in harm’s way, and it’s only when Jamie shares how scared he was and how much he put himself through by getting to Fort William for her that she realizes how badly she’s hurt him.

They apologize to each other and forgive each other. But it’s clear that their words to and actions against each other won’t be forgotten.