An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,22

her tongue. To keep herself out of trouble. “To say nothing of the competition.”

“Do you doubt yourself?” Harriet asked, as if she could not quite believe it.

“Do not all women doubt themselves?”

“But you were a duchess. You had castles at your command.”

“And you grew up in the business of department stores. It is in your blood, surely.”

“If nothing else, you are a New Yorker,” one woman said with a glimmer in her eye.

“I have spent the past sixteen years in a crumbling old castle, being regularly chastised by the duke and the dowager duchess for breathing too loudly, speaking too much, existing too vibrantly. I am not quite the foolishly ambitious young girl of eighteen I once was,” Beatrice said.

She believed in herself but had been told not to a few too many times.

She wanted to succeed wildly, but had been made to feel like a failure more often than she liked.

Of course she burned with ambition and desire to conquer all.

Still, she felt like an imposter.

Nevertheless, she did not want to let them all down. It was important that she manage expectations, especially if these women wished to make an example of her, and wished her to be a role model for countless other women. Beatrice did not need this added pressure to succeed.

“If you are daring, cunning, and ruthless enough to obtain the position, I daresay you have the spirit and stomach to do the job well,” Harriet said. “You’ll figure it out. You’ll learn. You must. Women are looking to you. Counting on you.”

“But I don’t even know where to begin,” Beatrice sighed.

“I should think the first step is obvious,” Adeline said with an enviable confidence. “You must go shopping. You must visit every last shop on the Ladies’ Mile.”

“Yes! You should survey the scene. Take stock of the competition. See what innovations have been done.”

“And seek an understanding of what a department store is really providing to its customers,” Harriet added sagely. Beatrice understood, in her heart, that it wasn’t just the selling of stuff but she didn’t know how to express what else it could be.

“Of course you must start at Dalton’s,” a red-haired woman suggested.

Beatrice smiled tightly. Politely. Under no circumstances could she go to Dalton’s.

“Of course she must go to Dalton’s. A store so well-known and self-assured that it doesn’t even have its name on the building.”

“A store that puts all others to shame. Everyone else simply copies what Dalton has done. She needn’t visit every shop on the Ladies’ Mile at all, just this one.”

“Unfortunately I cannot be seen setting foot there,” Beatrice said. She sipped her tea and hoped this group of smart women would have another suggestion which they could all discuss. “He is eager to buy Goodwin’s. In fact, he had already made an offer which I refused.”

“And apparently cajoled the board into refusing, too.”

“See, Beatrice, if you have managed that already, surely you can manage a department store.”

“My gratitude to Adeline for suggesting that I look into the matter so thoroughly and suggesting professional help.”

“We are here to help you in any way we can,” Adeline said.

“Can we go back to the part where she refused to sell to Wes Dalton?”

“Can you even imagine?”

More than one woman gave a dreamy sigh. Beatrice was confused; was this a professional women’s association or a gathering of women to talk about men?

“If you have refused Wes Dalton you can do anything,” one woman said, and Beatrice thought how she didn’t even know the half of it. How she’d known him before he was the Wes Dalton, the stuff of their daydreams. How she knew him to be a fortune hunter who aspired to nothing more than owning her store.

“It’s unheard of.”

“Unprecedented.”

“Who is Wes Dalton and what is so great about him?” asked a young woman who was clearly newly arrived in town.

“Wes Dalton is a legend,” Adeline explained. “In a city of unfathomable fortunes he is one of the richest. No one knows where he came from. One day, he’s a nobody. The next day he’s one of the richest men in New York.”

“All the other shops pale in comparison to his. Shop is too small a word for the magical space he has created for women.”

“You’re forgetting the most important part,” Harriet said.

“No, I’m getting to it,” Adeline said. “He is known to be tremendously supportive of women’s charitable endeavors. He gave funds to Miss Van Allen’s new Audubon society. And Miss Claflin’s settlement house. And a half a dozen