How It All Goes Down
An Evening's Entertainment
- Claire is exhausted and in her bed after a day of healing. She ponders Colum's condition: Toulouse-Lautrec syndrome (not that Toulouse-Lautrec has even been born yet).
- That night, Claire enjoys some potent Rhenish wine and listens to the castle bard.
- She finds herself squeezed between Jamie and Laoghaire. The former translates the Gaelic to Claire, while the latter stares jealous daggers in her direction.
- One of the legends the bard sings of is about a woman trapped in a fairy circle who disappeared for two hundred years. Ring a bell a bit?
- Jamie escorts Claire back to her bedroom and takes his shirt off. No, we haven't gotten to the steamy parts yet—he wants Claire to check his injuries.
- She decides he's healing fine and falls asleep alone.
- The next day, Claire treats patients all morning and then decides to explore the castle.
- It's easy to get lost: "Bits and pieces had been added here and there over the years, until it was difficult to say whether there ever had been a plan originally" (8.106). It's like the Boston of castles.
- Claire stumbles upon Jamie and Laoghaire making out in an alcove; Jamie notices Claire watching him, but he doesn't stop.
- At dinner, Alec the stable hand suggests that Jamie doesn't need a girl like Laoghaire… he needs a woman like Claire. We think if the man had more than one eye, he'd wink at her.