Outlander Book Club: The Fiery Cross Chapter 87 breakdown

Just the Outlander chapter

The chapter starts with Roger getting back home after sword training. Brianna has been getting on with things at home, including the laundry. She runs through just how difficult things can be in the time period when it comes to the laundry and trying to get on with other things during the day.

I think we take doing the laundry for granted now. After all, we throw it in a machine and let the machine do the work for us. Even if we have to go to a laundromat, we can still get on with a few things in there while waiting for the machines to finish. That wasn’t the case for Bree in the 18th century.

Roger starts to daydream of his time with Jamie learning how to fight with swords. They used wooden swords, and Roger realizes that it’s a little harder than he initially expected it to be. He’d done a little fencing in university, but it was nothing like this.

However, we get the sense that Roger is a fast study. And he is taking this seriously because he knows that he needs to be able to do something in the time period. Clearly, Jamie is willing to continue the lessons because of the good day Roger had in the first lesson.

When Roger returns to the present moment, he realizes that Brianna is drawing. He hopes that she isn’t drawing him while he’s been sucking his thumb, noting that she draws him at a lot of times like this when he’d be embarrassed about being captured. Maybe she’s writing in her dream journal.

Sure enough, Brianna is capturing Roger in the moment. She wants to make sure she can remember this clearly.