An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,19

Stevens! How nice to see a familiar face. It’s good to see you.”

“Beatrice! Though I suppose we call you duchess now.” They both paused awkwardly as they realized one best not. “Anyway, how good of you to visit. I do remember when you were yea high running around the store.” He held his hand out waist high to indicate how little she’d been as a girl, how long they’d known each other, and maybe what he still thought of her. “What brings you in today?”

Beatrice blinked. Did he not know?

“I’m the president now.”

He smiled at her indulgently. The way grandfathers did when children asked for another sweet.

“I did hear a little something to that effect.”

And he thought she would not attend to the store?

“Here I am! Reporting for duty!”

Beatrice winced; she went for bright and chipper when she ought to have gone with firm but kind. It was just that Stevens was making her feel “yea high” again. Now she was confirming his worst suspicions about the heiress who fancied herself playing store. And perhaps she was but she knew what the store had been once and she knew she could make it so again.

Beatrice took a deep breath. Time to try again.

This time, she would do her best impression of the dowager duchess.

“Please inform everyone that I should like to hold a meeting this morning at ten o’clock. I have a vision for the store that I should like to communicate. Now that I am in charge.”

But still she heard her voice creep up at the end of her sentence, twisting her declarations into requests for permission. Dalton probably never spoke thusly.

“Yes, dear,” Mr. Stevens said and though he didn’t pat her on the head, she felt it all the same.

At ten o’clock a smattering of store employees strolled in—a few clerks, as well as some of the department heads and merchandisers responsible for displaying the wares, and buyers whose job was to acquire things to sell. Beatrice recognized one short young woman with dark hair whom she’d seen rushing around the sales floor just now, and she was the only one who gave Beatrice her full attention. The others stood around, idle and shiftless and clearly there for reasons of morbid curiosity and not an interest in meeting their new president or learning her vision and how to implement it.

Her palms started to sweat.

“Good morning, everyone. I am Mrs. Beatrice Goodwin Archer. As you may have heard, my brother, Mr. Goodwin, has taken a leave of absence from his duties here for his . . . health. In his absence I shall be the president of Goodwin’s. Together we will be making some changes.”

Bored faces peered back at her.

Not very many bored faces, either.

Except for that one bright young woman.

Surely they employed more people than this?

Of course a few salesgirls were needed to mind the shop, but even so . . .

“We need to unveil a new look in the store, to appeal to a new, modern woman.”

“But that’s not who our clientele is—” Mr. Stevens interrupted. “The Goodwin’s woman is a respectable matron—a wife, a mother—who prizes legacy instead of a flash in the pan.”

Beatrice bit the inside of her cheek and tried not to take personally comments about respectable wives and mothers when she was neither respectable, nor a wife, nor a mother, when she had failed at all those things. Nor was she likely to become any of these things.

“Be that as it may,” she continued, “I think we should endeavor to attract new clientele. Future wives and mothers, if you will. But to do that we shall have to change our offerings. I suggest that we begin by drastically reducing the price of our merchandise for a limited time—”

“But then we’ll lose money. It needs to sell for the price we set otherwise—”

“But it’s not earning anything at these prices,” she countered. Her voice was rising up into a question again. “We must restock with merchandise that will appeal to a younger clientele that is looking for something new.”

Beatrice looked at a sea of bored old white male faces, which were becoming redder old male faces as they started grumbling amongst themselves. Because she was, in effect, some scandalous divorcée with no retail experience other than shopping, telling them that they were bad at their jobs.

But she did have experience. She was born and raised in this business, trailing her papa and learning at his knee and listening as he explained a new store