Bliss had never seen any kind of Viking, and she was boggled. “Glory be!” she whispered, and her eyes went so wide that they hurt. How she wished she could understand what that man was singing about with such fervor. And his voice! Why, it was fairly strong enough to bring all those angels and birds and flowers right down from the ceiling.

Bliss squirmed in her seat and looked uncomfortably up into the darkness.

Jamie chuckled, as if he knew what she was thinking, and then his hand reached out and closed over hers. A sweet thrill went through Bliss at his touch, and she didn’t pull away, but she did bend forward and try to peer around him to see if he was holding Peony’s hand as well.

On stage, the Vikings fought and died and sang fit to wear out a person’s eyes and ears. Then there was an intermission, during which everyone went to the lobby and drank orange juice. Bliss meant to write everything down the second she had the chance; she didn’t see how she could remember it all if she didn’t put pen to paper, and she did so want to remember.

Jamie was watching her drink her orange juice with that same odd intensity in his eyes that she’d noticed earlier. He looked as though he wanted to spread jam and cream all over her, like a scone, and eat her up.

Bliss trembled at the sensations the thought produced, and then it was time to go back to the box and watch the rest of the opera.

It ended magnificently, Bliss thought, with an enormous woman singing at the top of her lungs and waving a sword. She had a horned helmet on her head and carried a shield in her free arm.

“I do have my misgivings,” she confided to Jamie in a whisper, “about any country that expects its women to do the fighting.”

Jamie laughed and shook his head and Bliss turned her attention back to the stage. The singer’s thick, snow-white braids glimmered in the stage lights, and she wondered if they were real or attached to the horned helmet. Jamie was back to shifting uncomfortably in his seat, as he’d been doing intermittently all evening.

Before Bliss could see what the fat lady did with the sword, the audience rose to its feet, clapping. The tall man in front of Bliss blocked her view of the stage.

“Thank God that’s over,” Jamie muttered, and both Peony and Bliss glared at him.

Bliss felt expanded by the evening’s experience. Now she was something more than a lighthouse keeper’s daughter who had never been anywhere or seen anything. “You just don’t have any appreciation for culture, that’s all,” she told Jamie in lofty tones.

“Amen,” agreed Peony.

The first thing Jamie did when he and Bliss returned to the hotel was empty a packet of headache powders into a glass of water and drink the concoction right down.