I did it! I did it! I'm all caught up reading Voyager!
Well done, Surah.
I love the discussion at the beginning of the chapter about the length of Pamela and whether it deserved to be that long. I know it was a scene of the week not too long ago, but I wanted to mention it here. Definitely DG poking fun at herself and her books.
Some of the conversation about Carryarick makes me a bit more confident about my post in an earlier chapter thread earlier today that Jamie knew very soon after John's arrival who he was (the boy at Carryarick and the younger brother of Lord Melton, whom he met at Culloden).
I had to think a bit about Jamie's comment that Hal was right and looked back a couple of pages. But, once I read back, I realized that his point was that he believed he would grieve Claire (and by extension Brianna) forever because he never saw her dead and therefore couldn't quite accept that she was gone forever.
I also thought the parallel between going home to visit from his cave, and going to Lord John's quarters from the crowded prison cell was interesting.
I've been trying to pay attention to the prisoners that get mentioned some of whom we will meet again later. I think Innes was mentioned for the first time in this chapter (he liked to sleep warm along with Hayes and a couple of others) and he shows up later in this book, for example.
As for why John touched Jamie's hand, there are a couple of things. One, he doesn't know what happened with BJR, so he has no idea how strongly and negatively Jamie is likely to react to such an advance. Two, he is obviously genuinely attracted to Jamie, both as a friend/companion and in a more intimate way. So, from his point of view, a nudge of their relationship in that direction seems fairly reasonable. If it were someone else, or if Jamie did not have such an experience in his past, then the outcome may have just been Jamie saying he wasn't interested in that sort of relationship with John and it might not have been a big deal. It sounds like homosexual activity was not all that unusual in prison (there were no women around after all), so it could potentially have been OK with Jamie, so far as John is aware.
I remember when I first read Voyager thinking about how superficially similar the situations were, but also about the distinct differences between BJR and Lord John. They were both commanding officers in prisons where Jamie was being held and each was a gentleman with a sense of honor (at least in some ways in BJR's case). On the other hand, BJR was called Black Jack and had dark hair and was just nasty, whereas John is fair (light) with blond hair and is a good man and treats Jamie and the other prisoners well (to the extent that he can - he has limited resources to work with at Ardsmuir). I suppose there is also age - BJR must have been older than Jamie and John is younger, but I'm not quite sure how that fits in. But, I thought the dark/evil vs. light/good imagery was interesting given the other parallels.
I've also been wondering if there was something more to the fact that John now has sapphires from both Hector and Jamie and the blue was similar to the color of Jamie's eyes. Not sure I can figure out more than that, though.
I enjoyed the chess stuff too because although I don't play, my husband and son do sometimes and usually my son wins, so he's more like Jamie to hubby's John in terms of winning chess games.
Now you've made gone to think much deeper on John's reasons and motives regarding Jamie. I actually never gave much thought to his pov i.e the hand touch. But its very interesting. I was just shocked that he would be so bold. Wine and familiarlty perhaps? I too wanted to remember the men of Ardsmuir, for some reason I found I kept rereading whenever there was interaction amongst them. Very interesting parallels you have drawn there too - prison/visits and cave/home.
I will never truly leave.... you all must KNOW that!! 
