Once off the bus, Madeleine led the way into the center and purchased two tickets. “Do you want the dual admission?” she asked Hæra at the window. “The one that also lets us into Skaill House?” She nodded at a picture of the seventeenth-century mansion that sat on the Skara Brae site and required a separate ticket.

Hæra looked at the stately house that loomed judgmentally over the flat, green land. “I’ve never been in a house that large.”

“Then let’s go. My treat.” Madeleine gave her credit card to the cashier. “Is it a long tour?”

“Self-guided,” the cashier said brightly. “Take as long as you like.”

Madeleine gave Hæra a wry look. She didn’t seem the type who’d want to spend hours looking at antiques. “I warn you, I’m a history teacher. I take my time in places like this.”

Hæra shrugged and picked up a brochure. “I don’t mind. Time passes faster when it’s with you.”

Madeleine’s face caught fire. Hæra just glanced over the brochure as if she hadn’t said something that was almost—almost romantic. Something that made Madeleine’s heart race again.

“Aww,” murmured the young woman at the counter, wearing a little smile as she gave Madeleine her card and receipt.

She’d assumed the wrong thing. Madeleine should correct her. Except nobody had actually said anything that needed correcting, nobody had said that Madeleine and Hæra were…together, or something like that, so what was there to correct?

Madeleine, her face hot, shoved her wallet back into her purse. “Right, let’s move.”

“The exhibit starts there.” Hæra pointed at a corridor that led toward the back of the building.

Madeleine eyed the door that led directly outside to the settlement. You had to go through the gift shop to enter and exit, of course. “Uh, maybe we should just get straight to it.”

It was warm. The crowd, probably. Fresh air was just the thing.

“But the exhibit tells you all about the things we’re going to see, doesn’t it?” Hæra sounded confused, but Madeleine wasn’t about to look at her face. She could visualize it perfectly: a slight crease between Hæra’s dark eyebrows. “And they’ve got things from the settlement you can see up close. You said you were looking forward to that.”

“Well, I…”

“Come on.” Hæra patted Madeleine’s back. “We’ve got all day. It’s this way.”

She kept her hand on Madeleine’s back, between her shoulder blades, as they made their way toward the corridor.

Torture ensued.

When they sat down on a bench for a brief movie about the settlement’s history, their thighs and knees pressed together. Hæra seemed fascinated by the large screen, propping her elbows on her knees as she leaned forward and watched the grainy, black-and-white footage of the site’s excavation.