Outlander Book Club: Drums of Autumn Chapter 45 breakdown

Just the Outlander chapter

We start with Claire’s thoughts. She’s spending time with Brianna and knows that her daughter is hiding something. While she used to always know what was going on, Claire is out of practice and has also noticed that Bree has Jamie’s skill of masking things.

However, Claire does figure it out. She knows that Brianna is pregnant, and Bree is relieved to know that her mom can “still do that,” when it comes to figuring her out. Bree is able to tell Claire that she and Roger had sex and that she is pregnant.

Claire tells Bree that she has to go back through the stones. She can do it while pregnant but possibly not with a baby, and does Bree really want to take a baby through that?

They don’t even know if it’s possible anyway with Roger still somewhere in the past. And they hope that Roger is still somewhere alive in the past considering how long he’s been gone for and what he was going to do.

There isn’t enough time to get to the stones in Scotland, but Claire suggests Haiti, which is currently called Hispanola. That’s when Claire tells Brianna that Geillis was there and now Geillis is dead. It’s clear Claire killed Geillis, and Brianna isn’t about to ask why.

Bree then shares that the child isn’t Roger’s. Claire is shocked to hear that, and wonders who else is in the picture. It has to be in the past. They’re at November now and Brianna says she’s two months along. There’s no way it only took two months to come through the stones, get passage across the seas, travel to North Carolina, and reach Claire and Jamie. It would have had to take less time than that considering Brianna had been there for a while.

So, it had to be someone from the past. Brianna pulls out the ring from Frank to Claire, and Claire immediately goes cold. She knows what’s happened and who Bree has seen.

We get to see what happened through a flashback sequence in the chapter. We experience Brianna’s rape, but also get that stark reminder that nobody did anything to help her. Everyone knew what was going to happen and what was happening and nobody helped her.

Bonnet gives her the ring for “payment” and says she can take the money from his desk too. Brianna doesn’t want it but in the end, she decides to empty the contents of a bowl in her pocket and walk out with as much dignity as she can.

This happened two days after Roger, so Claire wants to know why the baby can’t be Roger’s. It’s not like anyone was using contraception. Bree made a point of saying she didn’t plan to have sex in the past. It turns out Roger used the pull-out method, which everyone knows isn’t all that effective. Claire points out that the baby really could be Roger’s.

We’re left with a little bit of hope that despite everything, Roger could be the father of the baby. There is hope that Roger will return and he and Brianna can start a family together.