An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,28
unable to hear our voices.”
“You can say that again.”
“And again and again, if a man’s listening,” Daisy said and they all laughed.
“We need an invention that makes our voices sound like men’s.”
“Someone tell Mr. Edison,” Adeline quipped.
“But will he even listen if a woman tells him the idea?”
“Perhaps we ought to have a man follow us around, repeating everything in a loud, booming male voice so that other men will listen. Like a human microphone,” Ava suggested.
“A male translator.”
The ladies were laughing now, so hard that teacups rattled in their saucers and women drew handkerchiefs from their pockets to dab at the tears in their eyes.
Some women paused to consider it.
“I daresay it has potential,” Harriet said. “Think of what we could accomplish if we had men to announce our ideas as their own?”
“Yes, imagine if we had men declaring that women ought to have the vote or equal wages.”
“Oh, but a man is so high maintenance,” Ava said. “A man must be fed and watered. And like a horse you must provide for it. They cannot seem to manage it on their own.”
“My own husband can scarcely find his own shoes without assistance from myself and the maid,” one woman said.
“Maybe I ought to dress as a man,” Beatrice mused. She started to envision herself in trousers, started to wonder how it would feel to have that much freedom of movement. It would certainly make riding her bicycle to work a much easier task.
“I highly recommend it,” Eunice said. She wore trousers. Unapologetically. But then again, she worked in the theater and they were a bit more tolerant than the rest of society.
“It would certainly make riding a bike easier.”
“An excellent idea if you want to have everyone in town talking about you. We saw what happened when women wore bloomers,” Ava said, sounding glum at the truth of it. But this made Beatrice smile.
“The thing about being a divorced duchess who openly displays the ambition to run a department store is that there is nothing more scandalous that I can do. Dressing in male attire and riding a bicycle to work will be the least of it. So perhaps I ought to do all of it.”
“Well, bicycle riding is all the rage. And it is becoming less scandalous by the day!”
“Now, if only we had fashionable cycling attire . . .” Adeline, the dressmaker, said with a gleam in her eye.
“Did you know I asked them to create a display of bicycles made for women, in order to sell the bicycles themselves and appropriate ladies cycling attire?” Beatrice said. “At first they told me it was impossible, then they said they could not manage it, and then they simply did not do it.”
“I would love a friendly store where I might inquire about a bicycle. I dream of riding one but getting one is another matter entirely.”
“The problem is that I cannot implement my improvements if the people who work with me won’t listen.”
“Did they listen to your brother when he was in charge?”
“It’s hard to say. I don’t think he ever asked anything of them, other than to show up and do what has always been done. Honestly, I wish to just fire them all.”
It was an audacious, tyrannical thing to hear coming from the mouth of a woman. Why, she ought to have just suggested burning the whole building to the ground and starting all over.
And then Harriet, daring Harriet, surprised her. “Why don’t you?”
She had reasons.
“I think of the families that they must all support,” Beatrice said. “And their loyalty. Some have been employees since I was a girl. Mr. Roger Stevens, in particular. He has been there since I was ‘yea high.’”
Harriet was having none of it.
“I bet their wives would do a better job and be loyal to the person who hired them. Which is to say you.”
“There are so many women in the city who would excel at retail work,” Adeline added. “And do they not deserve a clean, safe, well-paying, and honorable job, such as the ones you would provide?”
There it was again. Be the beacon for all the girls. Be the one to rescue them all. Be the one to blaze the path and set an example and change the world. She was supposed to do all that yet she could not get her own employees to listen to her.
Beatrice sighed, exhausted from the prospect of it, and sipped her tea.