Voyager

Nine months later, Jamie accompanies Lord Dunsany and his younger daughter Isobel to Ellesmere, Geneva’s home after her marriage. Jamie learns from the cook at Ellesmere that Geneva’s husband, Lord Ellesmere, became angry with Geneva once she discovered she was pregnant, as he knew the child wasn’t his. Jamie eventually learns that, though the child survived the birth, Geneva died that morning. Jamie finds Dunsany and Ellesmere fighting about who will take Geneva’s child, as Ellesmere thinks Dunsany lied to him when he told him Geneva was a virgin at their wedding. Lady Dunsany brings in the baby, whom Ellesmere grabs and threatens to drop outside the window if the Dunsanys don’t leave. Before he can, Jamie shoots him, and Ellesmere falls to the ground. Jamie grabs the baby he knows to be his son.

When they return to Helwater, Lady Dunsany tells Jamie that the coroner has decided that Ellesmere died by suicide after the death of Geneva, as others testified that Jamie never set foot on his property. Grateful for his help, Lady Dunsany offers Jamie the chance to return to Scotland. However, Jamie is conflicted, as he would be leaving his son. He declines Lady Dunsany’s offer, though she says he only needs to ask and she will try to help him get home.

The next few years are some of the happiest of Jamie’s life, as he has relative freedom with the Dunsanys and gets to watch his son, Willie, grow up. He comes to realize that John didn’t put him in Helwater to shame him, but to prevent him from the enslavement he would have experienced in North America. John visits every three months as promised, and he and Jamie resume their friendship. Willie is spoiled as the sole heir to the Dunsany and Ellesmere fortunes and runs freely on the property, with every member of the household under his control except Jamie. Yet Willie is obsessed with horses, and often rides and spends time around “MacKenzie,” the groom. However, with the time Willie spends with Jamie, people start to realize the resemblance between them. Jamie realizes he must leave before anyone recognizes that Willie is his son, and arrangements are made for a pardon to be procured so he may return to Scotland. Willie throws a tantrum, spooking the horses, when he learns that Jamie is leaving, but Jamie calms him and promises he will remember him, giving Willie his rosary to remember him by.

Claire, Brianna, and Roger take a trip to Loch Ness after a string of luck led them to discover documents about Jamie’s residence in Helwater and his royal pardon in 1764. Claire thinks about the dates of her time-travel and believes that if she were to travel again, she would end up in 1766, only two years after Jamie’s last known appearance in the record of history. They rent a boat to take out on the loch, and Roger asks Claire if she would try to find Jamie if she could. Roger recalls a night a few months prior where they saw a woman named Gillian Edgars (a fellow time-traveler Claire knew as Geillis Duncan when they met in the lead-up to Culloden) go through the magic stones at Craigh Na Dun, and he admits that both he and Brianna heard the sound the stones made as she traveled through them, surprising Claire. As they look out on Loch Ness, Claire mentions that there might be another time portal like Craigh Na Dun under Loch Ness, explaining the presence of the Loch Ness Monster. Claire asks Roger if he would jump in, not knowing what it contained, if he knew Brianna was down there, and both agree that they would.

Claire returns to Boston, leaving Roger and Brianna to continue the hunt for Jamie in Edinburgh, and considers attempting a return to the past. She knows she must speak to friends before deciding, including her close friend Joe Abernathy. As the only woman and only Black person, respectively, among the interns at Boston General, Claire and Joe stood out among their peers and were immediately drawn to one another. She remembers how they became friends over their shared struggles and interest in romance novels.

Claire arrives home in Boston and takes into account all of the luxuries of modern life she would have to forgo if she went back to the past. Claire misses Brianna and even Frank as she goes through the house and remembers the last time she saw Frank when he proposed taking Brianna with him on a sabbatical. Frank had suddenly revealed that he was leaving a month early, without Claire and with Bree, as he got a new position at Cambridge University. Frank assumed that Claire was having an affair with Joe and didn’t want Bree mimicking the habits of her mother by getting involved with Black people. Claire threatens to make Frank’s adultery known if he tries to take Brianna away from her. Claire admits that she did love Frank once, and that she tried to love him when she returned. Frank knows that Claire must think of Jamie whenever she sees Bree. When Claire confirms this, Frank storms out of the house, but when she goes to the hospital in the morning, an ER nurse tells Claire that Frank’s car slid out on black ice. He arrived dead at the hospital. Claire can’t sleep in their bed that night, and the next morning, she receives a telegram from Roger saying that he found Jamie.

Claire goes to visit Joe, who is also being visited by an anthropologist who wants to know if Joe can tell him anything about a centuries-old skeleton found in a cave in the Caribbean that Joe and Claire determine to be a white woman who was beheaded. After the anthropologist leaves, Claire asks Joe if she is attractive, fearing Jamie will think she has changed over the last 20 years. Joe says she is and assumes Claire is going to see Bree’s father. Claire asks Joe for a favor, and the two draw up the documents for her resignation from the hospital and the handling of her property until Bree comes of age.

As soon as Claire arrives in Inverness, Roger tells Claire that he and Bree have found documents suggesting an “Alexander Malcolm” (two of Jamie’s middle names) was working as a publisher in Edinburgh in 1765. Bree and Roger believe that, if the time difference is the same as it was before, Claire should be able to go back and find Jamie. Claire goes to a costume shop to find an old-fashioned dress and struggles to find one without zippers.

Roger and Bree find 18th-century coins for Claire to travel with, and Roger can tell the women are anxious about leaving one another. When Claire goes to bed, Roger tells Bree that Claire might be able to come back, but Bree worries she will never see her mother again. Roger tries to comfort her and tells her that he cares about her. Hours later, after Bree has gone to bed, Roger is still awake, and Claire comes downstairs. Roger promises Claire he will take care of Bree, and Claire gives him a letter for Bree, as she intends to leave before she wakes up.

Claire gets a driver to take her to Craigh Na Dun at dawn, but she finds that Brianna and Roger are already there to send her off. Bree is dressed in an 18th-century gown and surprises Claire by telling her that she plans to go to the past if Claire cannot. Bree convinces her to go, and Claire hears a roaring noise coming from the stones as she steps toward them, and the world disappears.

When Claire wakes, she is in Scotland. She walks the 40 miles from Craigh Na Dun to Inverness and takes a coach to Edinburgh. After days of travel, she arrives on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh and asks a local boy where Alexander Malcolm’s print shop is. Claire finds it on a nearby street and steels herself to enter. She immediately sees Jamie, and because his back is to her, he thinks she is his assistant. When he turns to see Claire, Jamie faints but is quickly revived. They both cry as they embrace each other but are also shy when it comes to their first kiss in 20 years, feeling as if they must discover each other again. Jamie asks about their child, and Claire shows him photographs of Brianna that she brought from the future; Jamie sobs looking at them. Later, Claire’s stomach growls, and Jamie’s suggestion that they go to the local tavern reminds him of a meeting he was supposed to have there with a Mr. Willoughby.