Outlander Book Club: An Echo in the Bone Chapter 31 breakdown
Just the Outlander chapter
The chapter starts quite light. Claire thinks about the gunner she killed. While she’s killed before, this one hits her hard. It wasn’t something she was supposed to do. Jamie then says that he’ll take the blame, but it still doesn’t clear her conscious. I love that we do see this side of Claire, but also that we see the caring side of Jamie.
There is a moment where Jamie brings up a time that Roger had to beat Jem to teach him a lesson. It was to do with leaving the chicken pen open. I’m not sure why Jamie thought it was a good time to bring that up. It didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the chapter for me, but oh well.
Claire, Jamie, and Ian need to make sure none of the prisoners on the ship escape. That’s when another ship appears, and that ship as the Union Jack flying. Jamie’s ship isn’t happy, and Ian ends up freeing the prisoners just in case the other ship decides to sink their ship.
It turns out the new ship is the Asp, and Jamie and his crew are allowed on when Jamie waves the white flag. Claire faints as the Teal shows up, but it turns out that she hasn’t eaten all that much. What about the Teal, though?
Well, Captain Stebbings on the Teal and Captain Hickman on the Asp are not the best of friends. There is a debate among those on the Asp about taking the Teal, and Ian wants to do that so he can get Rollo back. Jamie also shares that there is some important cargo on the ship—rifles. Claire is about to blurt out the name Arnold, but she realizes she has no idea whether Hickman is a Patriot or not.
Hickman warns Claire to go down below and a battle breaks out. Stebbings is injured and Hickman is going to kill him, but Jamie and Ian prevent that. While it would be understandable, it’s not the right thing to do.
Claire gets to work on treating those who are injured in the battle. One of them is Jamie, who was stabbed by Stebbings. The wound is close to the subclavian vein. It was a close call.
None of this gets the group closer to going to Scotland. It doesn’t help that Mr. Smith—who is actually Mr. Marsden—wants to know about how the colonel is. That’s Colonel Jamie Fraser. But Jamie resigned, didn’t he? Well, it turns out that Mr. Marsden expects Jamie to lead a company called Fraser’s Irregulars.
Meanwhile, Stebbings wants to die, and he wants Hickman be sent to do it. Jamie was the one that caused the injury so he doesn’t want Stebbings to die. He doesn’t want to feel responsbielf rot eh death. He even shows the wound he got from Culloden to help Stebbings realize that these types of wounds are survivable. Jamie survived despite wanting to die. Lord Melton refused to allow it since Jamie had spared John Grey’s life the night before Prestonpans.
What is surprising in this chapter is that Claire can relate to the abyss that the men have faced. She’s faced it before, and not just in the people she’s treated. Is this a look back at Voyager when she was separated from Jamie for 20 years?
In the end, I don’t feel like we’re that much further forward in the story to be honest. However, it was fun to read about Claire doing what she’s good at and seeing a somewhat softer side to Jamie, even in the midst of battle.