Brianna joins her father in the stables after Claire goes off to attend a birth
She catches sight of a Redcoat and realizes the man is Jamie’s enemy. While he is giving testimony, Brianna can’t get enough of looking at her father, and how much he stands out from the other men. After Fergus is acquitted, Jamie tells Brianna that Sergeant Murchinson is always causing him trouble, and this latest round was intended to keep him and Fergus away from their harvest. He asks Ian Fraser Murray to go with Fergus and Marsali in the wagon and that he and Brianna will ride ahead. Claire is over joyed.
One early morning in ie takes Brianna hunting in the mountains. She asks what they’re hunting, and he tells her bees. They finally find a hive in late afternoon. While they wait for dark when all the bees are in their hive, he teaches her to load and fire his musket, complimenting her on her aim. She tells him that her father took her target shooting and taught her to shoot with pistol, rifle and shotgun. She tells him about the Apollo moon landing, and he comments the moon sounds a lot like Scotland.
Jamie puts out the word about Roger Wakefield yet when there’s still no sign of him by mid-October, Brianna grows more and more worried. At Lizzie’s request, Brianna asks her father to keep a look out for Joie and Marsali at the whisky clearing, young Germain Fraser chokes on a button and Brianna saves him with the Heimlich maneuver endearing Bree to ie asks around. Brianna objects to giving the Native Americans alcohol. Jamie says he’s yet to see a bottle jump from the table to a man’s lips all on its own.
While gathering plants in the woods with Claire, Brianna admits to her mother that she is two months pregnant. Claire tells her that she must go through the stones before the baby is born. Brianna says that when Claire had returned, she had Frank to go back. With Roger lost somewhere in the past, she has no one to go home to. Claire tells her about the Geillis Duncan’s passage on Hispaniola, which is a lot closer than Scotland. Claire asks why Brianna didn’t take any precautions, and Bree says she wasn’t planning on having sex in the past.
Brianna tells her mother that she believes the baby isn’t Roger’s and then tells her about being raped by Stephen Bonnet and how the pirate paid her with her mother’s ring. Claire asks when it happened, and Brianna says two days after she slept with Roger, and she’s sure it isn’t his because they practiced coitus interruptus. Claire says the people who rely on that method of birth control are called parents.
Claire agrees with Brianna about not telling Jamie about Stephen Bonnet, knowing he would go after the pirate. Jamie returns home that night with banged up hands and Brianna worries about telling him, but he’s already guessed. He asks if Lizzie was right in that it was rape and she confirms it. He tells her he’ll see her safely married with a good father for the baby, and she says she only wants Roger who won’t want her. He assures her that if Roger is a good man, it won’t matter to him. She asks him to sing it and then tells him he can’t sing.
He comforts her and sings her a lullaby he said he would have sung to her as a babe
Jamie is also attending to a cow in labor. When she notices the sow and her piglets, a pregnant mare and a nursing cow, she remarks the stable looks like a maternity ward and explains to Jamie that means a special area in the hospital to protect newborns from germs. Jamie remarks Claire had told him germs were nasty things, and she agrees. Brianna grows pensive, thinking about how Claire had told her that childbirth in the 18th century was the most dangerous thing a woman could do. Jamie guesses what Brianna is thinking about and assures her Claire will not let any harm come to her.