They continued on to Harrods where they left the children in the care of a pair of harried shop assistants while they went to explore the Women's Apparel section of the department store. It wasn't long before they were in the fitting area, Romana trying on some of everything whilst Jordie demurred on account of sore feet. Her feet were sore, yes, but it wasn't anything debilitating. Clothing shopping was no more her métier than cooking. In any case, when Romana was putting on theatrics, Jordie preferred to be watching.

"My mother always said I should dress to accentuate my 'feminine wiles.'" Romana turned to display a flowered calot hat pinned to the victory rolls in her red hair. "What about this one?"

"Pretty but I wouldn't like it for me."

"Nor do I." Romana began pulling out the hatpins. "My mother would adore it." She returned the hat to a shelf to be retrieved by a shop assistant. She surveyed the rack of clothes awaiting her. "Time for something else, I think." She carried a garment off to the fitting room.

Romana reappeared in a hunter green cocktail dress with a slender patent leather belt to emphasize the natural dip of her waist. The flare of the skirt ended just below her knees, drawing a road map to stocking-less calves and well-turned ankles. The dress's sweetheart neckline showcased the tanned column of her throat and the dip between her collarbones. Her glittering pendant spangled there, star-like, and she shone.

Romana spun in front of the mirror, scrutinizing her reflection from every angle with a critical eye. "I don't know."

"You'll make Edgar sorry he thought to look elsewhere."

Romana's eyes flitted from Jordie's to anyplace else. She picked an errant hair from the bodice of her dress. Finally, she confided, "It isn't Edgar's attention I'm after."

"Oh?" Jordie sat on her hands to keep from crossing her arms in front of her. Only an idiot would think Romana would be on her own for long. Edgar could feast on his regrets. "Someone new stepped onto the field?"

Romana smoothed her hands over her figure, lips stretched in a frown. "No one I stand a chance with."

"Have you asked?"

"Haven't had to. When someone wants you, you know. You also know when they don't." Jordie was split between the urge to celebrate and the impulse to berate this person into the ground for not knowing better. How could anyone not want Romana when Jordie wanted her more each day?

"You should take your chances. At worst, at least that way, you'll know where you stand."

"You think?" Jordie smiled wanly in confirmation. "No, you're absolutely right. I know you're right."

"It's been known to happen."

"Every now and then."

Jordie reached into a small gift bag she'd concealed behind the settee she was sat on to retrieve a delicate crystal bottle of perfume. She repressed her nervous penchant for rambling to announce herself.

"If you're going to go stealing hearts, you're going to need new perfume."

Romana smiled, something tremulous and eager flitting over her expression.

"Jordie..."

"No, no, I won't hear any excuses."

Romana offered her hands. Jordie applied a tasteful spritz to each of Romana's wrists and proceeded to rub them together. The perfume warmed and bloomed on Romana's skin, pervading their corner of the fitting suite in a cloud of bold fragrance.

"The perfume attendant ambushed me with that on the way in. It made me think of you." She lifted Romana's hands to her nose to breathe in her scent. Perfect. "I think you'll enjoy it."

Romana gave a tentative sniff, eliciting a fond smile from Jordie that was instantly reflected on Romana's shining face.

"I love it. I'll have it."

"That's yours. I already purchased it for you."

"Jordie..." Romana turned over Jordie's hands in hers and clutched them tightly in hers. "You are astonishing."

"There's nothing astonishing about this."

"I say otherwise."

Jordie shrugged off the remark, her innards in an uproar. She couldn't bear Romana's earnestness for another moment. "It's nothing, I always spoil the people I care about."

Romana leaned in to speak intimately. They were only centimeters apart. "Speaking of spoiling..."

"Were we?" She chose cheekiness as an alternative to hopeless longing. Romana wasn't the first woman she'd loved and let go.

Romana curled two fingers around Jordie's to coax her to a rack bearing clothing Romana had carried into the fitting area earlier in their trip. "I shouldn't be the only one dressing up. Try something on for me?"

"I thought I was here as moral support," Jordie groused.

Romana set upon her with a teasing smirk.

"And you've served well, soldier, but I want to see you in something pretty too. I've even chosen a few things I thought you might like." There, mingled among Romana's personal selections, were comparably more slender attire. Utility suits and shirtwaist dresses. A-line skirts and silk rayon blouses. Knit tops and trousers. Jordie's hands alighted on them, more from wonder that Romana had thought of her than any desire to try them.

"I always look the same, no matter what I'm wearing."

"That doesn't mean you shouldn't treat yourself to something opulent and beautiful after all you've seen. There's still beauty out there, you know. It's easy to forget."

"I can't forget. I have you—to, to remind me." Jordie gave herself a swift mental kick. "I'll just go pick something out." She snapped up the first black garment she glimpsed and fairly ran to the changing room. She was positive Romana's eyes were searing through the changing room curtain to watch her hands fumble on zips and concealed buttons. There was little but an onion skin pretense shielding Romana from what Jordie felt for her. The truth was threatening to out itself—and her.

Dressed, Jordie waffled inside the fitting room wringing her hands with uncertainty. Jordie wasn't anywhere near as flamboyant as Romana, her tastes running more conservative due to her military service and military family upbringing, but she couldn't deny a need to impress the other woman. She wanted Romana to see her as attractive, even desirable. To view Jordie through the lens that Jordie viewed her.

"I want it understood I'm only doing this for you," Jordie uttered as she stepped into the center of the fitting area, into Romana's line of sight.

"I'd be jealous if you did it for anyone else."

Romana put down her champagne once Jordie stepped fully into view. There were other parties modeling clothing throughout the suite though none paid Jordie's unease a bit of mind and Romana was solely concerned with inspecting Jordie from head to toe with all the shrewdness of a drill instructor. Jordie permitted the inspection.

Romana trailed the backs of her fingers down the sheer sleeves of Jordie's dress. Jordie swallowed an incriminating noise of desire, or despair, whichever might have suited were Jordie in any fit state to think. Romana revolved around Jordie, bestowing the sunbursts of her touch every place that pleased her whilst Jordie stood rooted to the spot. The indent of Jordie's elbow. The lightly padded byway of a shoulder. The unforgiving crest of a hipbone (Jordie startled, Romana apologized; they went on). Just beneath the neck of her collar. On the underside of her chin.

Romana stood behind her before the full-length mirror glass, tracing an indelible line of heat from shoulder to shoulder using the blunt curve of a manicured nail. Jordie repressed a tell-tale shiver. The rapid flutter of her heart resounded through body, her skin, her clothes like a reveille. Romana stood still, her hands firmly planted on Jordie's shoulders and then down to her sides where the dress fit true to size; on some other woman, like a dream.

"Hello, stranger."

There was a hint of chill in her breath from the complimentary champagne she'd drunk. Jordie thought wildly Romana would taste of champagne were Jordie to kiss her at this very moment. Jordie had wanted badly to kiss her from the first glance Romana had taken at her lips. Could it be that she'd misread Romana's preoccupation with her cigarettes when it was something else she sought? Jordie had chosen a fine time to learn hope.

"And here I thought I wasn't unrecognizable in this getup."

"Not a chance. I'd know you in nothing at all."

A shop assistant swanned in to offer further refreshments or other assistance in choosing garments, shattering the moment. Jordie furiously buried her feelings as something to be considered once they'd all got home for the evening while she passed another sleepless night in bed. Not whilst Romana charmed the lovely young woman with patter about her fine eyes and dimples, and Jordie pretended at a no more than friendly interest.

Romana came back round to her front to look at the full picture of Jordie. Her hands remained at her sides. Jordie missed them on her body.

"You don't like this, do you?"

Jordie pulled at the bodice of the cocktail dress. She thought she looked all right in it considering she had a few keyhole dresses in her closet to begin with. As she saw it, she couldn't err with the tried and true. "To tell you the truth, I prefer trousers." Jordie didn't mind dresses, per se, but if it was all the same to her she'd prefer to go another way. Doing otherwise was one in a growing list of concessions she'd made to keep a moderately happy home.

Romana stepped back and planted her hands on her hips. "Then, wear trousers. I asked you to do a turn for me, not play a role. Wear what you like. I don't care a wit about the clothes."

Thus encouraged, Jordie came out again, not ten minutes on, this time in understated high-waisted black trousers and a stark white button-up blouse. She felt more herself. This was a uniform of a different kind. Once Romana disappeared into the department store showroom and returned with a waistcoat she recommended Jordie add to her ensemble, she even felt understood. Seen.

"There. You look very collegiate. Every bit the gentlewoman." Her hands again found Jordie's body--her forearms, the knobs of her elbows, and the small of her back. Tucking the silken tag gently into the neck of her waistcoat.

"You think so?"

"I do." Romana rubbed her shoulders. "Trust me, I'm a doctor."

"I trust you."

Romana was terribly easy to trust. Twice as easy to love.

Romana plucked a black felt fedora from an adjacent mannequin. "Come here, I want to you to try this. It'll complete the look."

"Romana, really! I couldn't."

"Please, Jordie. Humor me?"

Hell and Bristol would freeze before Jordie could deny Romana's cajoling tones and shining eyes. She submitted to Romana's vicarious preening.

She stood behind Jordie in front of the mirror. "There, aren't you a picture?"

The wide brim of the hat cast Jordie's eyes and nose in shadow. She supposed it gave a her a sort of mysterious, roguish air about her.

"I like it," she allowed.

"I love it! Cary Grant, eat your heart out."

"Romana!"

"Someone had to say it! You're getting the hat. I'll have the shop assistant wrap it up for us."

"I couldn't."

"I can. Consider it an early Christmas gift from me to you."

"You don't need to get me anything."

Romana arched a fine eyebrow.

"I always spoil the people I love. Isn't that what you said? Let me return the favor." Though not Jordie's exact words, the sentiment held. Jordie loved her. Romana loved Jordie. The world could burn and nothing would change the truth.

"All right, I'll gratefully take the hat. Thank you, Romana."

Romana's cheeks pinked at Jordie's sincerity. "Wonderful. Think nothing of it."