Claire and Jamie (finally!)
It’s then that Claire enters and the reunion scene from last week unfolds once again.
“You’re real,” Jamie marvels, recovering from his fainting spell.
Credit: Aimee Spinks/Starz
“So are you,” Claire replies.
But it does necessitate him taking off his pants.
(Just not for the purpose we may have wanted.)
“Do you mind?”
he says to Claire.
“It’s all right,” she answers.
“We are married.
At least, I suppose we are.”
“Aye, we are,” he says, eyeing her ring.
The ring he gave her on their wedding day that she never took off.
“I would very much like to kiss you,” he says.
“May I?”
She acquiesces and the two share their first kiss in 20 years.
Geordie picks that very moment, with Jamie sans pants, to return.
“Orgies in the shop!
And before noon!”
he exclaims, proffering his resignation and storming out.
Jamie will sort things with Geordie later, but first he needs to know about the couple’s child.
They’re photos of Brianna.
Their heart-to-heart is cut short when Jamie realizes he forgot something at the tavern.
He asks Claire to accompany him, and along the way they run into a familiar face.
And he’s incredulous at the sight of Claire.
“Is milady staying with you?”
“I don’t ken yet,” says Jamie.
“I hope so.”
“What about …?”
Jamie replies that he needs to consult with Ned Gowan regarding “the law.”
Had a life, indeed.
With Jamie’s business dispatched, he takes Claire to a brothel.
Yes, a brothel, run by none other than the aforementioned French woman, Madame Jeanne.
This is where Jamie and Claire are to lay their heads for the night.
As they make themselves comfortable, Jamie presses Claire about why she has returned.
Simply to relay word of their daughter?
Or to truly be with him?
“I came back now because before I thought you were dead,” she tells him.
“Whoever you are, James Fraser, yes, I do want you,” Claire tells him.
And thus begins probably one of the longest stripteases in television history.
(Okay, maybe not, but they do take their time shyly removing all those layers!)
Finally disrobed, they fall into bed … and bang heads.
(Not a euphemism.)
Dear reader, it was not gentle.
Afterward, their pillow talk is sweet and playful.
Which, Claire realizes, explains his working relationship with Madame Jeanne.
Their chatter then turns serious: “I only have one question,” Claire says.
“Did you ever fall in love with anyone else after I left?”
“No, Sassenach, I never loved anyone but you.”
Jamie explains that he must run another errand (is he paying a visit to Ned Gowan, perhaps?
), and instructs her not to leave the brothel.
She reuses her colonies explanation, and Ian seems satisfied with that and departs.
They dispense many a secret of the trade (put your fingerthere!
), until Madame Jeanne walks in horrified to find Jamie’s wife with the women.
She tells her to go back upstairs, and Claire returns to a strange man in her room.
He wants to know where Jamie’s ledgers are.
She says she has no idea.
He says maybe he’ll f her to jog her memory.
She tells him to get out.
He grabs her by the neck and … cut to black.
