An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,2
It felt right. Already she felt a shimmer of possibility that she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was the magic of the city, welcoming her home.
Beatrice easily fell back into the brisk pace of a city person; the dowager duchess never managed to get her to move at the sedate pace of a duchess with nothing to do. Though Lord knew her ladyship had done everything in her power to slow Beatrice down, to silence her, to stifle her. The duke, too.
But she did not want to think of them anymore.
She didn’t want to think of anything in her past. Beatrice only had eyes for the future.
She made her way along the dock, jostled by the crowds. Someone stepped on her boot and shoved her slightly to the side. People here were in such a hurry, all burning up with ambition and determined to get it done yesterday. All that energy urged one to go faster, try harder. It took extraordinary effort just to keep up. Some found it exhausting, Beatrice found it exhilarating.
The duke should have known better than to try to cow an American girl. A Manhattan girl.
She would have the last laugh because she was here and she had money and she was free.
Beatrice flashed a grin.
The dowager would say women of a certain age shouldn’t grin. A certain age being six and thirty. Anyone would say she was old news and unmarriageable but oh, if she didn’t feel like her life was only beginning.
The dowager duchess had no command over Beatrice now.
And what do you know if Beatrice didn’t give a whoop of joy. Right there in the middle of the crowded docks.
No one batted an eye.
Because this was New York City and if you wanted to whoop for joy on the street, apropos of nothing, it was the least interesting thing that happened on that particular spot of sidewalk.
When Beatrice saw Henry, the family’s longtime driver, she shot her hand in the air for a wild, undignified wave unbefitting a duchess. “Henry! Hello!”
He smiled when he saw her.
“Welcome back, Duchess.”
“Oh, Henry shush. I left her back in England. I feel like Miss Goodwin again.”
They sorted out the bags, and there weren’t too many. She’d left most of her duchess dresses behind, as they were the sort of gowns one wore when languishing in a drafty old castle, trying to blend in with the woodwork.
It went without saying she had Other Ideas for her time in New York City.
“Henry, will you take us to the shop first?”
“Before you kiss your mother?”
“You know me, Henry.”
“I do, Miss Goodwin. I do.”
Henry expertly navigated the carriage through the mad crush on the docks and onto the avenue taking them uptown to her favorite place in the world. They moved slowly—traffic!—but there was so much to see.
Buildings she remembered had been torn down and rebuilt taller than ever before, in the newest cast-iron architectural styles—next to churches and dwellings that had been standing since before she’d been born. It was just like she remembered and wildly different at the same time. The old crushed up against the new. This was a city for constant reinvention.
For second chances.
And there it was ahead, a particular building rising up on the corner of Broadway and Tenth Street. Goodwin’s, the greatest department store in all of New York. It was certainly her most favorite spot in the world.
Her grandfather on her mother’s side had started a successful shop farther downtown, her father had taken over the business—and renamed it after himself—after marrying her mother. He’d built this magnificent department store on the Ladies’ Mile. It was five floors of everything a man, woman, or child could ever want or need.
Her happiest childhood hours had been spent wandering through the shop, marveling at all the pretty fabrics, gloves, jewels, umbrellas, whatever. She tagged along after her father, as he discussed pricing strategies and merchandise displays and managed all the employees.
Goodwin’s was where she experienced that magical rush of a girl’s first love. Shopping. And her other first love.
Whatever happened to him?
The carriage rolled to a stop and Beatrice didn’t waste a minute, leaping from the carriage and bursting in through the tall front doors.
It was just like she remembered.
The pink marble columns. The five-story open atrium. The old brass chandeliers.
But it all felt smaller and it didn’t quite gleam as it did in her memories. All the energy out there on the streets came to a screeching halt in these once-hallowed halls.