Outlander Book Club: The Fiery Cross Chapter 8 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
Roger is in the woods alone, and he realizes how bad his coat now looks. He’s ashamed of this considering it was Jamie’s coat to make Roger look more presentable than his own coat would have done.
As he looks to clean his coat, Duncan Innes turns up, and Roger comments on the way he looks. Jocasta has made sure that Duncan looks like a man ready to take over an estate. That’s not why he’s around, though.
Duncan wants to introduce the Bugs to Roger. Jamie has made Arch factor of the Ridge for when Jamie isn’t there. Roger feels a pang of jealousy. He assumed that he would end up being factor. That would be the role of the husband of an only daughter in this time. And while Roger doesn’t know everything about running a large estate, he would be able to learn.
Fergus is good for some elements of running the estate, but not everything. It turns out Fergus isn’t great with numbers, but Roger is. Now Roger fears that Jamie doesn’t think Roger will be any good at living in the past, and that concerns him.
Mrs. Bug takes Roger’s coat to clean it, and she and Arch explain their story. They’d left Scotland shortly after Culloden because they’d lost their work due to the Crown taking over the Highland estates. They were originally looking at Edinburgh, but in the end, they chose the Colonies. However, they’ve not got a lot of money and Jamie offered them a chance to live at the Ridge.
When Jamie brings a crying Jemmy, Mrs. Bug takes the child to soothe him. That leads to the Bugs asking about which MacKenzies Roger belongs to. Jamie explains that he’s kin through his mother’s side and is connected to the MacKenzies of Leoch.
This is how we find out what happened to Hamish and the others. They made their way to Canada, although the Bugs can’t agree on the exact location. It’s just a little bit of information that we need to wrap up that storyline as there would have been plenty of questions, and it seems that Jamie never found out the full truth of what happened to the MacKenzies, showing just how hard it was for people to get back to everyone in this time period.
At the very end, Duncan escorts the Bugs to Jamie’s camp. Jamie wants to speak to Roger alone, which is when he shares the news about forming a militia. Jamie wants Roger to join him as a captain, which is why he needs Arch as factor.