An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,46

destination. Perhaps even a revolution.

“So as you can see, it is not just shopping. But I wonder if you instinctively understand what we do—empowering women through their own desires and pleasures—is precisely what one objects to.”

“What she said,” Dalton said.

The man was walking off in a huff without even trying to drop the last word. The crowd dispersed. Dalton and Beatrice turned to each other once the spectacle was over.

“I thought we were rivals,” she said, lifting one brow. “But now I’m not so sure.”

Chapter Nineteen

Beatrice turned toward Dalton, her heart still racing as it always did when she was shooting her mouth off again, and now Dalton was near and these two things together had her in quite a state.

“Congratulations,” Dalton said, gazing at her. “I will admit that I’m impressed.”

“Well, if you are impressed then I must have done something spectacular,” she quipped but really, truly his compliment meant more than anyone else’s. He knew. He saw. “Thank you.”

“I know what it takes to make something in your head become real. To say nothing of hiring and training staff, stocking the merchandise, dreaming up displays, and orchestrating a fleet of shopgirls, errand boys, and all the others. To launch a store is no small feat. But you have done something more than that.”

“Thank you, Dalton,” she said and she felt seen, truly seen, in a way she hadn’t from the others in her life.

He smiled wryly.

“In building something so remarkable, you have also ruined my plans for revenge. Probably.”

“May have or definitely have?” Beatrice teased. “Or will you just have to try harder?”

Of course she and her mouth had to go and essentially dare him to try to ruin her. All of a sudden she felt like the champagne had gone to her head. Or maybe that feeling was just from the way Dalton was looking at her. His eyes were just so blue and they were fixed only on her, even though there was a marvelous spectacle all around her.

“Make no mistake, we’re still rivals,” he murmured. “But you have inspired me.”

“Be still my beating heart.”

She said it for a laugh but her overexcited heart really needed to calm down. Between the rush of confrontation with that man and now Dalton so close at her side, there was much to set her heart racing.

Because somehow they had wandered off from the crowds and they were alone and the chatter was quiet, the orchestra far away, and the lights were dim.

“This is dangerous territory. Us. Alone. You no longer hell-bent on destroying me.”

“I didn’t say that,” he replied. “My store closes at eight. I need a hobby for after hours.”

“You really know how to make a woman swoon,” she said.

Speaking of swooning—they had unintentionally wandered into the home furnishings department. It was never the most popular and it was sparsely attended by party guests at present.

Miss Lumley and Margaret had worked together to stage little rooms—a parlor here, a dining table set with the finest new styles of china and silver, a bedroom there. Miss Lumley had an eye for interior decoration and she orchestrated a new style of furnishings, lighter and newer than all the heavy old Victorian stuff.

Dalton wandered over to it, Beatrice, too.

“So you’re on the side of twin beds,” he said, referring to the debate currently raging among doctors, theologians, and interior decorators about whether a married couple ought to sleep in one bed or two. They stood side by side, looking at the beds in question, piled high with soft white linens.

“Unapologetically. It’s more hygienic, among other reasons.”

She didn’t want to remember the other reasons right now, reasons like unfeeling husbands and marital rights. Thank God she’d had her own suite of rooms at the castle, but she could imagine for those who didn’t a twin bed of one’s own would be the next best thing.

Or not being married to an unfeeling man one didn’t love at all.

Beatrice did not want to think of any of that now.

Now when her old flame, Wes Dalton, was here looking like he was thinking of kissing her. She realized she wanted to kiss him, too. She was supposed to be old and dried up; she’d been told she was cold and unfeeling. But she did not feel any of those things now. She felt eighteen again, heart racing because she was close to maybe kissing Wes Dalton.

“What about on a cold night, Beatrice? What about newlyweds, young and in love? What about on a night like