An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,49
need to win. She has bicycles. Ergo, we have a car. Bigger, better, stronger, faster.”
“Are you still drunk from the party? She doesn’t just have bicycles, she has what bicycles represent. She has that reading room.”
“It’s a smart statement she’s making, I’ll grant you that. But at the end of the day, it’s a room. With chairs. And books. She’s not even selling anything in there! We could do the same, though, and make it a membership or subscription service. We charge money just to breathe air and sit in our chairs. Brilliant!” Dalton was off and running now, the ideas spinning. God, he hadn’t felt this excited for a store display in ages. He could almost kiss her he was so thankful for the spark of inspiration. Or cutthroat competition—one of the two. “I know! We’ll launch the Dalton’s Membership with exclusive access and benefits. Anyone with a membership will always turn to Dalton’s first.”
“Now that might be an idea. The car on display I’m not so sure of. It’s not like you’re going to take orders for them and run them down to the factory.”
“Why not?”
“You sell things, Dalton. Things that a woman can pick out that morning, have delivered that afternoon, and wear out that evening. And then you send the bills to their fathers and husbands and slowly and steadily siphon your fortune from theirs.”
“I don’t just sell things,” Dalton said, really warming to his topic now. “I sell spectacle. Promise. Exclusivity. The future. What better than an automobile? The promise of freedom, of sights unseen, of adventure waiting to happen. And yes, totally possibly completely lethal. Ruinous. Dangerous. But that’s half the fun of it.”
Like her. She was spectacle and promise. She was adventure waiting to happen, she was dangerous, she was possibly the death of him and his ambitions but . . . he’d had one hell of a time kissing her last night. Years of pent-up passions and frustrations and longings for her finally had their moment.
It was a moment he couldn’t stop thinking about. Couldn’t stop wanting more of. Which was why he had to avoid her. He couldn’t concentrate otherwise. He couldn’t compete if he couldn’t concentrate.
“This is about your plans for revenge, isn’t it?” Connor asked.
Dalton motioned for Connor to join him at the edge. He pointed to the spectacle.
“Look at that.”
They both took a long look, from the vantage point of the roof, where no one could see them looking. They saw a gleaming, restored storefront wrapped up in a line of women, and some men, stretching around the block. Officers had arrived on horseback to help manage the energy of the crowds.
And there was a steady flow of people exiting with distinctive Goodwin’s bags on their arms, in a world where practically all purchases were delivered discreetly.
Women don’t want to be reminded of their desires or their indulgences.
Unless they did? Unless they refused to feel shame about it? Dalton saw in an instant what she had achieved: all those distinctive bags, all those conversation points, all those moments where a friend would recommend Goodwin’s to another friend. All those women owning what they wanted.
He was going to need more than a car on display.
“Ah. I see.” Connor nodded. “Revenge would be nice but survival will be better. You’re going up against a girl, Dalton. You better not miss or then what will everyone say?”
“So you see that I need the automobile. Dangerous, powerful, adventurous, the way of the future.”
What Wes Dalton wanted, Wes Dalton got.
25 West Tenth Street
One week later
In a drawing room down the street from the great stores of Dalton’s and Goodwin’s, a group of select ladies were laughing at Wes Dalton. That great merchant prince of Manhattan, that forever most eligible bachelor women sought after, had made one great mistake. His latest display was a sensation—and a possibly fatal misstep all the same.
“An automobile!”
The Ladies of Liberty laughed uproariously. They had seen the advertisements in the newspapers, and a few had braved the crowds of men to go see it themselves. They’d also heard the men in their lives discussing it earnestly, at length.
“Shh. We are supposed to be impressed with his big, powerful, hulking . . . machinery,” Ava said with a strained seriousness that devolved into giggles and blushes.
They were not talking about the car. Or were they?
“The display of the automobile shows that he does not understand what we have created,” Beatrice said. “And as such, what he is truly competing with.”