Outlander Book Club: A Breath of Snow and Ashes Chapter 73 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
We start with Claire and Jamie dealing with whiskey casks. This is when the topic of the Committee of Correspondence comes up. The Committee wants to build a large militia and get their hands on thousands of muskets. It wasn’t easy for Jamie to get his hands on just 30 of them, so that’s going to be interesting for the others. Jamie is happy that he’s not part of that.
Mr. Wemyss interrupts the conversation. Something has happened with Lizzie, and he notes that Lizzie would be better dead.
It turns out that Lizzie is pregnant, but she doesn’t know who the father is. There is a moment Jamie worries that Young Ian did something, but Mr. Wemyss notes that he would have been happy had it been Ian. It’s one of the Beardsley twins. It’s not that she can’t tell the two apart, but that she has been with both of them on purpose. Even the twins don’t know who the father is.
Claire and Jamie go to see Lizzie and the twins to find out what’s going on. Lizzie has fallen for both of the twins, and they are both in love with her. They all want to remain together and raise the baby as a family, but that’s not going to happen. While Jamie and Mr. Wemyss discuss things, Claire finds out from Lizzie what happened.
It was during a malaria attack. The twins helps to rub the lotion all over her, and that led to them sleeping together. There was an instance of Lizzie not telling them apart, but she realizes that doesn’t matter. She loves both of the twins, and they love her. Why should it matter? They’re not hurting anyone.
Claire agrees that in a city, they could get away with this. On the Ridge, they can’t. It would bring shame and scandal.
Jamie decides that Lizzie needs to marry one of the twins and tells Lizzie to choose. She can’t, so one of the twins suggests that draw straws, and that’s what they do. Keziah ends up marrying Lizzie with the marriage contract originally written up for Lizzie and Manfred being used with Manfred’s name replaced with Keziah’s. Josiah is told to leave until the baby is born.
Josiah does leave, hoping happiness for his brother. That seems to be the matter solved.