An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,18
her. Beatrice ignored him.
“This soup is delicious, Mother.”
“I shall pass our compliments on to the cook.”
“Never mind the soup,” Edward said impatiently. “Do you honestly think you’re going to stop the sale? And then what will you do?”
He smirked and took a long swallow of his drink, draining the glass. His angry gaze never left hers. His expectation that a servant would notice his glass and refill it was met.
“I think I should take over and run the store.”
Edward spit out said sip of whiskey.
“Edward!” Mother exclaimed.
“Over my dead body,” Edward said.
“Edward, please don’t be so dramatic,” Beatrice replied.
“Beatrice, running the store will ruin your prospects,” her mother said.
“I’m not interested in my prospects.”
“You should be. You ought to marry well and marry soon before Edward loses the shop—”
“Mother!” This time Edward shouted. “I’m not losing the shop. I’m selling it so I have the funds to invest in Hodsoll’s silver mine. I already have an offer from Dalton himself.”
And now Estella choked on her wine. A proper lady would choke to death on her wine before she did something as unseemly as spit her drink across the table into this marvelous soup.
A silence fell. And that silence was punctuated by the low, firm, cold voice of Mrs. Estella Goodwin. “You will not sell Goodwin’s to that man.”
“You don’t have a say, Mother.”
“I am your mother. Of course I have a say.”
“Even the law says she has a say,” Beatrice pointed out.
Edward did not take kindly to being reminded of the rule of law. Some men were like that.
“What’s wrong with selling to Dalton anyway?” Edward asked.
Beatrice and her mother exchanged A Look across the table.
For various reasons which would not be spoken of, that question would go unanswered. Both mother and daughter knew. Oh, they knew. For Beatrice, the reasons were deeply personal. Estella had her own reasons and she clung to them fiercely.
Make no mistake: Estella would never, ever agree to sell the store to Wes Dalton.
One would be wise to never underestimate two women united in their purpose, especially if it involved thwarting a man. Especially if said man was fixated upon a course of action with which they disagreed.
Nonetheless, Edward persisted in his foolish plans. So really, they were left with no choice but to arrange for his transportation to a sanitarium on Long Island where he might restore his health. The drinking had taken such a toll upon his constitution.
And that was how Beatrice, the reigning debutante of 1879 and the scandalously divorced Duchess of Montrose, came to be president of Goodwin’s department store.
Chapter Nine
Goodwin’s Department Store
Broadway
Beatrice pushed open the doors to Goodwin’s and stepped inside, feeling both terrified and determined. It was her first day reporting for duty as the president of Goodwin’s Department Store. So what if she was a divorced woman with little to no relevant on-paper experience and who was only in this position due to nepotism, ambition, and a nefarious streak?
She squared her shoulders. She could do this.
Beatrice strode farther into the store. Her arrival went unremarked upon. As a duchess, she never entered a room without being announced first.
Inexperienced in retail as she might be, she was fairly certain that someone ought to welcome her. The clerks milling around the sales floor might not be aware that she was the new president—did they even know?—but they should at least assume that she was a customer.
She probably ought to . . . announce herself?
Beatrice thought about Dalton and what he would do; he would stroll in like he owned the place and just expect everyone to fall over themselves accommodating his every whim and wish. Except she did own the place, and always had, and so always walked in thusly. She didn’t know any other way of walking into a room other than as herself.
Perhaps she needed the authority of an office.
Beatrice made her way to where her father—and she presumed, Edward—had his office. She walked through the main sales floor with tables stacked with gloves and umbrellas and little trinkets, past the pink marble pillars that stretched from ground floor to the ceiling five stories high, up the grand staircase and through a few more departments, and one unmarked door that led to spaces where various functions of the store were done—accounting, for example, and the mail-order business.
It was just like she remembered.
The offices were well lit by large windows, and filled with a smattering of desks and files and men. One in particular she recognized at least.