Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Ruediger looked at the array of clothes and clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “It’s a shame time has constrained us to shopping off the rack. No amount of alterations can match a tailored fit.”

A large pile of rejected clothes showed how high his standards were. The most glamorous clothes I’d ever seen didn’t lift his furrowed brow. The clothes he accepted were no different. It seemed less like he really liked them and more like the result of a series of compromises.

Then again, I guess that might be expected from a wealthy nobleman who’d seen everything. The real mystery was Luca. How could he assert his tastes with such composure when he’d never seen clothes like this in his life? Women’s dresses, no less. Flipping through the shop catalog, he looked completely natural.

“How about this one?” he asked.

Ruediger turned to the shopkeeper. “Bring this one out, would you?” he said.

Apparently, he agreed it was worth taking a look at. The shopkeeper brought out a coat to the attendant helping me into the clothes. It was dark green velvet with white sable lining. The velvet was stitched with fine gold thread in a diamond grid pattern and the vertices were studded with small pearls.

It must’ve been rare for the shopkeeper to roll up her sleeves and assist customers herself, but she had to pull out all the stops for someone as important as Ruediger.

Nevertheless, When else am I gonna get the chance to be pampered like this? I let out a little sigh and smiled awkwardly. “Does it look okay?”

“Hm. Yes, it looks quite nice on you,” Ruediger replied.

How much would this coat cost? I chuckled trying to imagine it.

The shopkeeper rubbed her hands together and approached Ruediger. She smiled good-naturedly and, with deference, said, “The young master has quite the eye and the lady’s natural beauty compliments whatever she wears. There’s also a hat and gloves to go with this coat. Would you like to see them?”

“Yes, do bring them out,” said Ruediger without even looking at the woman. He was too busy examining the catalog.

“How about this?” asked Luca.

“Ah, bring this too! Hm, what do you think of this, Luca?”

“The ivory one? That looks nice. What about this navy one?”

“Looks good. Not bad at all,” Ruediger said.

The two nodded as if acknowledging each other’s taste. They’d at least asked my thoughts earlier, but now they were truly in their own world. No sooner had Ruediger spoken than two more outfits lay before me.

A white coat with dark mink fur around the neck and a navy coat with black otter fur. The navy coat might’ve looked too dark, but it had ostentatious gold lace on the hems and sleeves. I was starting to get sick of this as I stared at the ever-growing heap of clothes. Just picking from that pile alone would take another day.

I clapped my hands to get the boys’ attention. “Excuse me, gentlemen? Shouldn’t we be on our way? There’s a mountain of clothes here. This should be enough to choose from,” I said.

“Choose?” Ruediger repeated as if I’d said something strange. “No need to choose. We’re taking all of them.”

“What?” I said, glancing at the pile of clothes again.

There were at least ten full outfits there. It was enough to wear something completely different every day for more than a week. I didn’t think it was all that necessary.

“Do we really need this much?” I said.

“Colonel Winterwald, here they are,” the shopkeeper interrupted, returning with the hat and gloves to go with the dark green coat at the very moment I opened my mouth.

Ruediger stood up without looking at them. He pointed at the mountain of clothes. “Please have these delivered to the Grossel Hotel, Room 303.”

“Yes, sir. How should I handle the hat and gloves? Would you like them sent separately or together—”

“Everything together,” Ruediger said before she could even finish speaking.

Despite having been interrupted, the shopkeeper smiled ear to ear at Ruediger’s pronouncement. I could see her busily tallying up how much this single day had improved her sales in her head.

My mouth fell open as I watched the scene unfold. Getting out of a place that fast was an art. It was the quickest transaction I’d ever seen. Throwing his coat over his uniform, Ruediger reached out and held the door open to signal it was time to go.

I shuffled over, trying to keep up with him. “Excuse me, Colonel?”

“Colonel? Seems a bit formal among family, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Then, my lord?” I said, somewhat distastefully.

An amused smile crossed his face. Come to think of it, I’d never seen him smile. The faint curve of his lips caught me off guard. It put me in a daze.

“Just call me by my name,” he said.

“Ruediger?”

“Yes, that will be fine.”

Then he turned and began striding toward our destination again. His legs were so long that he’d nearly left me behind in just a few steps. We’d already put a great distance between us and the tailor shop while going back and forth about what I should call him.

“We ought to hurry. There are many things to buy today. First, let’s take care of all your things, and then we’ll shop for Luca,” he said.

“My things? Didn’t we just get my things?”

“What’re you talking about? We’ve still got a long way to go.”

“But we’ve bought enough already. I don’t need anything else,” I said.

“You’ll need new boots and a new hat as well. What do you mean you don’t need anything else?”

“Okay, maybe boots, but we just bought a hat,” I protested.

“I bought that to complete the set, but a milliner will have much finer hats than a tailor,” he said.

“Are you serious?” I said, raising my voice without realizing it.

I thought he said we were in a hurry. What was the point of squeezing in a hat store too? And we just bought a hat. It wasn’t like I didn’t have one.

I couldn’t get my head around the nobility’s spending habits. I knew Winterwald was very rich, but was it really normal to deck out the younger sister of your dead brother’s past lover?

Luca was at least part of the bloodline, and it made sense to buy things for a child, but I was basically a stranger. I guess I might be some kind of in-law, but Jonas and Lalisa were never married, so even that didn’t make sense.

I’d never received such an expensive gift. I didn’t know how to respond. I just stood there, awkwardly twiddling my fingers.

Ruediger suddenly turned and looked at me directly, interpreting my gesture in some unexpected way. “Are you really so loath to receive a gift from me?” he asked.

“What? No. It’s not that, it’s just...” I trailed off, unable to speak under his powerful gaze.

Do you know the destructive force of a beautiful face wearing no expression? I suddenly felt like I’d committed a heinous offense.

While I hesitated, he continued as if it were nothing. “If not, then I suppose we have no problem, right?”

That’s quite the sleight of hand. I finally came to my senses. “No, I just mean. It seems a bit excessive to me,” I said, still flustered.

“Oh, well. It’s not the least bit excessive to me. No need to let it burden you,” he said, with a hint of something like pity.

He made it so obvious that at first, I wasn’t even sure what he was saying. The novel is told from Luca’s perspective, so Ruediger never seems like anything other than a stern, mature adult. I was a bit taken aback to get glimpses of the other sides of him. Especially when he took on that self-centered, aristocratic tone. I didn’t know how to respond.

In the end, we stopped by the hat shop. A bell-shaped cloche with a breezy pink kerchief folded in the shape of a large peony pinned to it. Boater hats that looked like cakes with crisp ribbons tied around them. The fine veil of a cocktail hat, decorated with ostrich feathers. I had no idea there were so many types of hats. I suppose that’s why he wasn’t satisfied with the hats at the tailor. I let out a sigh as I looked at the boxes upon boxes of hats stacked up like a matryoshka doll.