An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,3
customers wandered around the counters and displays, rifling through the selection of goods. This was not the vibrant, bustling scene of her youth. This was not the magical place that inspired hope and dreams of brighter days and better things.
Something had changed. Something had gone wrong.
The magic was gone.
What happened?
Edward, probably. With her father gone and the store failing to capture her brother’s imagination, it had been left to plod along as it had always done, even as the city grew and transformed all around it.
With a heavy heart, Beatrice turned, pushed open the heavy doors, and stepped onto the street.
She was momentarily blinded by the sight of a tall, gleaming white building on the other side of Broadway. It was six stories high with a massive glass dome rising higher still. Massive sheet glass windows revealed colorful displays of hats and gowns. A crush of people were entering and exiting through a revolving door. The whole building was a hive of activity.
“Henry, what is that? I don’t see a sign.”
“That is Dalton’s. It’s so popular it doesn’t need a sign,” Henry explained.
I used to know a Dalton once. Funny, she hadn’t thought of him in years and she’d already thought of him twice this morning. Ghosts of New York, she supposed. But never mind that, Beatrice had crawled through hellfire and agonies to be here, in the heart of New York City, and she wasn’t looking back.
Chapter Two
The Goodwin Residence
One West Thirty-Fourth Street
After thoroughly enjoying the modern conveniences of her family’s mansion—which she had been deprived of in the duke’s drafty old castle—Beatrice dressed and went down to dinner.
“It’s good to be home,” Beatrice said and it was somehow the wrong thing to say because it reminded her mother of her daughter’s failure.
A divorcée was bad. But to divorce a duke? It boggled the mind and was somehow a personal attack upon her mother, her values, and the sacrifices and plans she had made.
Her mother, Estella, smiled tightly.
“What is the news?”
“You know most of it from our letters,” Estella said. Her mother’s long missives detailing the births, deaths, marriages, and scandals of Manhattan society had always been a delight to receive and savor. But then Beatrice had to write back—with so much time and very little to report—and it’d been rather depressing.
Silence. Her mother sipped her wine. Edward, leaning against the mantel, sipped some spirits. What a homecoming.
“I went to the shop today,” Beatrice said.
“Already?”
“I popped in on my way home from the ship. I had missed it desperately and couldn’t wait to see it. You know it is my favorite place in the world. But things have changed. Or rather . . . they had not changed at all.”
Beatrice looked from her mother to her brother, hoping for an explanation as to why the crown jewel of the Ladies’ Mile was now a dispiriting building hosting last season’s leftover merchandise, like a party that had gone on too long.
“We’re going to sell it,” Edward said, leaning against the mantel. In the fireplace were the smoldering remains of a fire that had been allowed to die out. But a few stubborn embers remained.
“Sell it!?” Beatrice exclaimed. “That’s like saying you want to sell a heart or a lung. Edward, what are you saying?”
Edward shrugged. “It’s a lot of bother for little return. Besides, we don’t need it. Not with the rents from our various real estate investments. With the proceeds of the sale I can invest in Hodsoll’s silver mine.”
Her mother sat on a chair with her spine straight—there was simply no excuse for bad posture—sipping some wine.
“The shop isn’t quite what it used to be, dear,” her mother said. “Frankly, it’s an embarrassment now. None of my friends shop there anymore. Terribly awkward. Best to just sell it and be done with it. Since we don’t need it. We are assured a fortune if we invest in the Hodsoll’s mine.”
“You could—and I’m just thinking out loud here, and I am just a woman so what do I know,” Beatrice began with her usual preface to any thought, meant to ward off her former husband’s plentiful criticisms. “But . . . maybe you could try a bit harder to make the store successful?”
“Beatrice, your brother has been working very hard and circumstances are just beyond our control. Things never quite recovered after the recession in 1873.”
“That was twenty-five years ago.”
“And in 1893.”
“Well, then. Something bad happened a few years ago. But what about second chances?”