An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,45

for this shiny, newly polished jewel only to destroy it. He still could, if he wanted to. It would be more expensive but he was a ruthless millionaire merchant prince with the third greatest fortune of the Gilded Age. It was not impossible.

If that’s what he really wanted . . .

My name is Wes Dalton . . .

The familiar refrain faltered. He was on the verge of becoming ridiculous. Blowing a fortune on something so petty as revenge. Blowing up a store like this and all it represented. He was not that kind of man.

And so Dalton had to decide, right there in the middle of the ladies accessories department, what kind of man he would be. One hell-bent on revenge, still nurturing a heartache. Or would he rise to the challenge Beatrice presented? He thought he’d nearly conquered Manhattan but maybe he was only just getting started.

And then.

A voice.

A jocular had-too-much-to-drink man’s voice emerging above the chatter of the crowd.

“It’s just shopping, isn’t it? It’s just a shop. All you need to do is run in, pick a scarf, buy it, and leave. All this does is slow down the process.”

Dalton was not the only one to overhear the old man and take issue with his foolish opinions. Beatrice was nearby; her eyes narrowed and then her gaze connected with his.

They were sworn rivals and bitter enemies, but in this they were of one mind. It was a slight that would not go unchecked.

In unison they turned and faced the drunk know-it-all man. Dalton recognized him; his name was McConnell, and his wife spent hours in his store. She didn’t necessarily spend a fortune though. One was given to understand that the store provided an escape from the duties of home and her overbearing bore of a husband.

“Just shopping?” Beatrice queried in the politely lethal tones of a woman about to slay.

“My good man, it is not just shopping,” Dalton repeated, in case his male voice would better make the point.

“It’s just a bunch of stuff for sale, though, innit?” McConnell, silver-haired and red-faced, was definitely on the verge of falling into his cups.

“Shopping, especially in a store like mine or Dalton’s, is a meditation upon who we are and who we wish to be,” Beatrice explained. “It is a pleasant and sensual experience that engages both present and future thinking simultaneously. To be shopping is to be thinking of something as lofty as one’s aspirations and something as practical as mathematics. All while one’s senses are engaged. Where else can you feel something as soft as cashmere, breathe in the heady fragrance of flowers, imagine who you want to be and buy the things to make that dream into a reality?”

“Some men are not up for pleasant, sensual, and immersive experiences,” Dalton remarked to Beatrice, in a way that suggested he was not one of those men. Her eyes flashed, understanding.

“Let us not forget that people are so very terrified of women enjoying themselves,” Beatrice said.

“We should not be afraid of women’s desires or women’s pleasure,” Dalton said. “For it is the engine that drives the world. What we do,” he nodded to Beatrice, “is stoke a woman’s desire, satisfy her desire and transform it into money and power.”

Her gaze locked with his and he felt himself stand taller. She nodded at him to continue, so he did.

“We make a woman want—whether it’s a dress or gloves or a reticule. She makes the purchase, which provides jobs to women at the mills and factories, and it keeps the shopgirls employed.”

“The dressmakers and her seamstresses,” Beatrice added. “The milliners, the cleaners.”

“The delivery boys, the boys in the mailroom, those in accounting,” he added. “All those people earn their bread by a woman’s desire. By a woman’s determination to dream and make it real. Whether it’s a dress, a place setting, or a whole life.”

The man was redder now. They had an audience now. Dalton was really feeling what he was saying. They made magic, him and Beatrice, and he wasn’t going to give up.

“And this is not just a store,” Beatrice added. “It is not a place for errands or mere acquisitions. This store is a space for women to live and thrive outside of the home. For where else can we safely go outside of the house to gather, to talk, to live, to dream, to do?”

All at once Dalton understood the reading room.

The childcare.

The hair salon.

What she’d created was not just a department store, it was a