The next morning, Claire and Jamie talk about their past and how they both tried to avoid thinking of one another, but they both ultimately know they made the right choice for Brianna. Claire tells Jamie about the legend of Dunbonnet and how Bree is proud of him. They hear a knock at the door, and Claire, still naked, hides under the bed sheets. They are surprised to see Ian Murray, Jamie’s brother-in-law, who is surprised to find him in a brothel. Ian is looking for his son, Young Ian, whom Jamie hasn’t seen and would not bring into a brothel. Ian is shocked when Jamie reveals Claire, and his ill opinion of Jamie quickly lessens. Ian tells them that Young Ian often runs off and told him that he was going to see Jamie in Edinburgh a few days earlier, but Jamie hadn’t seen Young Ian since he sent him home with Fergus months earlier. Jamie doesn’t want to leave Claire but knows he must look for Young Ian with his father.

Claire is left alone at the brothel to think about everything that has passed since her arrival in Edinburgh. Her solitude is momentary, though, as she receives a knock at the door, and a teenage boy asks her if she is Mr. Malcolm’s woman. When Claire asks for his name, the boy reveals that he is Ian Murray, and she gets him to come inside. When Ian asks where Jamie is, Claire reveals that he and his father are looking for him. Claire suspects Jamie is hiding something from his brother-in-law. There is another knock, which Claire again assumes is a chambermaid but is instead Mr. Willoughby. At her request, Mr. Willoughby tells Claire how he met Jamie when he was a stowaway on a ship, smuggling brandy. Claire asks him if he can get her food, but he is unsure he can in his hungover state. She eventually wraps herself in quilts—her one dress having been taken for repair the previous night—and goes downstairs. Claire sees a group of women in similar states of undress, who all work for the brothel and believe Claire is also a sex worker. When Madame Jeanne finds Claire downstairs, she is shocked and embarrassed but takes her to get new clothes.

When she leaves to talk to Bruno, the brothel’s strongman, Claire hears Madame Jeanne discussing the news of another beheading of a sex worker nearby. Once they leave, Claire hears another knock on the door, and a young man comes in speaking in French. When the man spots Claire, he drops to his knees and hugs her, and Claire realizes he is Fergus, the French orphan Jamie once brought to Scotland. Jamie enters then and grabs Fergus, mentioning that the excisemen are following him. When Claire goes down again, she is accosted by one of these men, but is saved by Mr. Willoughby’s entrance with a pistol. After a warning, Mr. Willoughby shoots the man, causing most of the house to come to the room. Fergus arrives and asks the exciseman how many others there are, but the man dies. Jamie enters the room, and he and Claire haul the body to a hidden room where Jamie stores his smuggled liquor. They clean the exciseman’s blood off Claire, but Jamie realizes that the dead man is not actually an exciseman. Claire tells him she saw Young Ian, and Jamie mentions that he knows he is in Edinburgh but intends to take him home in a few days.

Claire and Jamie discuss how they will explain her 20-year disappearance to others while they eat dinner at a tavern. They are greeted by a Sir Percival Turner, an acquaintance who warns Jamie not to follow through with his plans to travel north. Jamie tells Claire how he came to the printing business—at first only to conceal the smuggling, but later to publish Jacobite propaganda, using the press as his new weapon. As they return to the printing house, they see that the building is on fire. Jamie and a few bystanders go inside to try to save what they can as men with buckets of water arrive. Jamie is able to get his press out of the building as Ian arrives and sees his son in an upstairs window. Ian tries to go into the building, but Jamie stops him and goes instead, bringing Young Ian out a few moments later. They take Young Ian back to the brothel, where the boy tells them he was the one who set the fire after he had seen a strange man with one eye and a pigtail asking about Jamie all throughout town. Young Ian saw the man try to get into the print shop, where Jamie was housing thousands of damning pamphlets, which Ian burned so Jamie would not be implicated. Jamie and Ian argue about Young Ian’s welfare in Edinburgh, and Jamie admits that he wanted to take the boy back to Lallybroch. Young Ian says he wants to stay. After his father leaves, he tells Jamie and Claire he thinks he killed the man with one eye. The man had already been inside, stealing the illicit pamphlets when Ian entered. When he tried to shoot Ian, he slung hot lead at the man, starting the fire. Jamie assures Young Ian that he is not a murderer who is damned to hell and tells him he should tell his father.

Claire wonders if the man Ian was following has something to do with the warning Sir Percival gave him, and Jamie tells her about the kind of people he faces in the smuggling business. Jamie believes the man was tasting the brandy, knowing how to trace him through its quality, but is afraid the man associated Jamie the smuggler with Jamie the printer.

The next morning, Claire decides she should stock up on medical supplies and goes to the apothecary. She buys several herbs from Haugh’s, an apothecary she visited years before, and sees a clergyman from the tavern the previous day. Hearing about her medicinal knowledge, the minister, Archibald Campbell, asks if she will come see his sick wife that day, and Claire agrees. When Campbell leaves, the shop worker tells her that Campbell is a puritanical Free Church minister. After Jamie takes Young Ian to confession, he goes to his insurer to learn more about the fire while Claire goes to see the reverend’s wife.

Claire learns that the woman, Miss Margaret Campbell, is the reverend’s sister, and she is perceived as having a mental illness. Her maid, Miss Cowden, says Margaret often goes catatonic before she wakes screaming. Miss Cowden tells Claire that Margaret was in love with a man who likely died at Culloden and was captured and tortured by English soldiers soon after. Miss Cowden was discovered there by family and brought home, but she rarely spoke again. Young Ian comes to fetch Claire, but when he mentions Jamie, Miss Campbell starts at the name and begins screaming. Jamie, Claire, and Young Ian make arrangements to go to Lallybroch. When Claire tells Jamie about Margaret Campbell, he recognizes the name as the lover of one of his late friends, Ewan Cameron.

Jamie, Claire, and Young Ian head north to a rendezvous with Jamie’s smuggling accomplices and are joined by other familiar figures like Fergus and Mr. Willoughby. Jamie seems worried, and he tells Claire and Ian to go to Lallybroch immediately if something goes wrong. They are found by excisemen, and Claire and Ian flee while Jamie goes to face them. On the way to the nearby road, they hear men whispering that they are going to a nearby abbey, where some of the other smugglers are. Claire decides to try and distract the excisemen while Ian goes to the abbey to warn the others.

As she makes her way down the road, someone grabs Claire, and she attacks him, but it turns out to be Fergus. Jamie is close behind. Claire tells Jamie what she and Ian heard, and Jamie shows her that the exciseman who came were hanged nearby, but not by Jamie’s smugglers. Young Ian appears, having returned when he saw someone with Claire, and they all head into the Highlands.

It takes several days to get to Lallybroch, and Claire wonders how her good friend Jenny, Jamie’s sister, will receive her after 20 years. Ian is anxious about how his parents will discipline him, and Jamie fears the same. Claire gets a warm reception from Jenny and Ian, but Jamie is less welcome, and both can sense the tension in the room. Ian tells his son he will give him a thrashing, and when Jamie tries to defend Young Ian, Jenny and Ian make Jamie whip the boy. Before doing so, Jamie apologizes to Young Ian for how he allowed him to act. To everyone’s surprise, Jamie hands the strap to Young Ian and has his nephew whip him, too. Afterward, all is forgiven among the family at Lallybroch.

That night, Jamie tells Claire about what Duncan said about the gold and the white witch, and Jamie fears he is being hunted by someone who wants the gold. However, rather than throwing the treasure into the sea like he told John, Jamie tells Claire he put the treasure back where he found it before returning to Ardsmuir. The next morning, Claire sees a few women she believes to be their nieces coming up the hill as she makes a fire and returns to bed with Jamie. However, a few moments later, they are interrupted when a teenage girl enters the room, asks who Claire is, and calls Jamie “Daddy.”

When Jamie asks where the girl came from, she says her mother brought her, and a woman Claire recognizes as Laoghaire—a girl who once had a crush on Jamie—enters the room. Laoghaire came to Lallybroch once she heard about Claire’s return. She tries to attack Claire before Jamie stops her and sends her downstairs. Jamie tries to explain things, but Claire doesn’t want to hear it, and he leaves to talk to the others. Claire cries and rages once Jamie has left and gets ready to leave Lallybroch without speaking to Jamie again. Before she can, Jamie returns and tells Claire that he married Laoghaire after she was widowed with two daughters, and they haven’t lived together for years. Claire is furious that Jamie didn’t tell her, and Jamie admits he was terrified of what she would think. They fight with one another until they begin to have angry sex, before Jenny stops them by throwing a bucket of cold water on them. She asks Jamie if he is not ashamed that the whole house can hear him, and he says he is ashamed before leaving the room.

Jenny tries to comfort Claire while her daughter, Janet, apologizes to Claire for telling Laoghaire. Janet admits she told Laoghaire because Jenny told her to, and Jenny thinks it is best when Claire says she should leave. Claire rides away from Lallybroch without saying goodbye to Jamie. She feels foolish for returning to Jamie. Two days into her journey, she is discovered by Young Ian, who was sent by Jamie. He says that Jamie and Jenny fought seriously once Claire left, and afterward, he fought with Laoghaire while he was on his way to look for Claire. However, Laoghaire shot Jamie, and Young Ian came to find her because Jamie is dying. Claire and Ian rush back to Lallybroch, but Claire wonders if Jamie is actually dying or if this was just a ruse to get her back.

Jenny and Claire have a tense exchange once Claire returns to Lallybroch. Claire sees that Jamie is ill but appears out of danger. As she sits at his bedside, Claire thinks about all the responsibilities Jamie had to shoulder while she was away and comes to terms with his marriage to Laoghaire. Jamie begins to speak to Claire, but he thinks Claire is merely a fever dream until she touches him. He did not send Young Ian to get her, and in fact forbade him from doing so because he didn’t want Claire to come back out of pity for him. Though Jamie thinks he is going to die and is content to do so, Claire believes she can heal his fever with the penicillin she brought from the future.

Jamie’s fever begins to subside the next day, and as soon as he wakes up, Claire questions him about Laoghaire. Jamie explains how he felt like a stranger at home when he returned to Lallybroch from England, and he felt lonely until Laoghaire also returned to Lallybroch after the death of her second husband. Thinking they could both help each other, they decided to marry, but Laoghaire always felt disappointed by Jamie and seemed afraid of something from her past, so Jamie left for Edinburgh. Both Jamie and Claire feel that they tried in their other marriages but could not love their other spouses the way they love each other.