“Clothes,” she was saying. “We’ll get you clothes, then it’ll be tea time.”
“Tea? What is tea?”
Dougless stopped walking. An Englishman who pretended he didn’t know about tea? This man was more than she could bear. She’d help him until she got him checked into a hotel, then she’d be glad to get rid of him.
FOUR
They walked together down the wide sidewalk in silence, the man looking in shop windows, at the people, and at the cars on the street. His handsome face wore such an expression of astonishment that Dougless could almost believe he had never seen the modern world before. He asked her no questions, but often halted for a moment to stare at a car or at a group of young girls in short skirts.
It was only a block to a small clothing store for men. “Here’s where we can buy you something less conspicuous to wear,” she said.
“Yes, I would see a tailor,” he said, looking up over the door and frowning as though something were missing.
“It’s not a tailor, just ready-made clothes.”
When they were inside the little shop, Nicholas stood still, gaping at the shirts and trousers hanging from the racks. “These clothes have been made,” he said, his eyes wide.
Dougless started to reply, but instead turned to the clerk who’d come forward to greet them. The man was small, thin, and had to be at least ninety years old. “We need clothing for him from the skin out. And he’ll have to be measured for size.” Even if the man did remember his sizes, he’d no doubt pretend he didn’t, she thought.
“Certainly,” the clerk said, then looked at Nicholas. “If you’ll step over here, sir, we can begin measuring.”
When she saw that the man was leading the way to a semi-private area at the back of the store, Dougless stood where she was. But Nicholas insisted that she go with him into the curtained-off area.
Dougless sat on a chair off to one side, picked up a magazine, and pretended to read while the clerk began to undress Nicholas. The way he raised his arms for the clerk to unlatch his armor made it look as though he was used to other people undressing him. Carefully, almost reverently, the little man set Nicholas’s armor on a cushioned bench. Dougless saw the man run a caressing hand down one side of the armor before turning back.
Under the armor, Nicholas wore a big-armed linen shirt that was plastered to his body with sweat.
And what a body he had! Dougless thought as she almost dropped her magazine. She’d seen armor in museums and had laughed at the way the metal had been molded into the shape of a muscular torso. She’d always thought that it had been done to hide a man’s paunch. But this man, this Nicholas Stafford, was indeed as broad-shouldered and as muscled as the shape of the armor.
Dougless tried her best to keep her attention on the magazine she was holding, some treatise on the joys of salmon fishing, but she kept glancing up at the bare-chested Nicholas. The clerk brought one shirt after another for him to try on, but the earl liked none of them. After about the fifteenth shirt, the clerk looked with pleading eyes to Dougless.
She put down the magazine and walked to stand before him, her eyes determinedly on his face. “What’s wrong?” she asked Nicholas.
He moved to one side, away from the clerk, who busied himself with folding clothes. “There is no beauty in this raiment,” he said, frowning. “There is no color, no jewels, no needlework. Perhaps a woman could ply her needle to one of these and—”
Dougless smiled. “Women don’t sew today. At least not like this,” she said as she touched the cuff of his linen shirt that had been thrown across a clothing rack. The cuff was embroidered in black silk in a design of birds and flowers with a lovely hand-done trim of black cutwork on the edge.
Dougless caught herself. Of course women—some women, somewhere—still sewed like that because someone in this century had sewn that shirt, hadn’t she?
Dougless picked up a beautiful cotton shirt from the discarded heap. The English weren’t like Americans in always wanting something new every five minutes, so the clothing in English stores tended to be of the best quality, made to last for years. If one could afford the outrageous prices, the quality was worth the cost.
“Here, try this one on again,” she said, finding herself coaxing him. She wondered if there was a woman alive who hadn’t experienced shopping with a man and trying to persuade him to like something. “Look at this fabric; feel how soft it is.”
As Dougless held the shirt for him, his reluctance evident, Nicholas slipped his arms into the sleeves, while she did her best to keep her eyes off the way his muscles played under his skin.
The shirt was beautiful. “Now,” she said, “step over to the mirror and have a look.”
She had seen the three full-length mirrors when they’d entered the curtained area, so it had not occurred to her that Nicholas had not noticed them. She wasn’t prepared for his reaction to the three mirrors. At first he just stared at them; then, cautiously, he reached out to touch one.
“They are glass?” he whispered.
“Of course. What else are mirrors made of?”
From inside his balloon shorts, he withdrew a little round wooden object and handed it to her. On the other side of the wood was a metal mirror, and when Dougless looked into it, her image was distorted.
Glancing up at the man, she saw the way he was studying his reflection. Was it truly the first time he’d ever seen a clear full-length view of himself? Had he only seen his own reflection in distorted metal mirrors such as the one she was holding?
Of course not, she told herself. He just didn’t remember the last time he’d seen a mirror. Or maybe he did remember and was pretending he didn’t.