An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,61

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“Stop. I am too mad at you right now.”

“Because of a little pink silk? It’s supposed to be a gift, from a man to his lover.”

“It’s more than that and you know it. You are asking me to parade around in your flag like I’ve been conquered. I won’t be conquered.”

“What happened to rivals by day, lovers by night?”

“You blurred the lines. I have to go.”

“Beatrice, wait—”

She was gone. And she took the damned silk with her.

25 West Tenth Street

Two days later

The Ladies of Liberty were meeting and sipping tea and plotting world domination as ladies were wont to do, when Beatrice stormed in late, skirts rustling and hat askew. She had the worst news.

“Ladies we have a problem. A pink silk problem.”

Beatrice pulled a swatch of the most gorgeous pink silk that had ever been imagined and woven to life from her pocket and tossed it to their outstretched hands, like one might toss breadcrumbs to a goose.

Ava caught it first.

“Oh, that is gorgeous,” she cooed. “This is like spun sugar and a maiden’s blush and cherry blossoms.”

“It would make the prettiest ball gown,” Adeline added, reaching for it hungrily. “God what I would give to design with this.”

“It’s so soft and delicate, too. It’d be a dream next to my skin.”

“Or tea gown! Or underthings. Can you just imagine? Oh, I now want to commission an entirely new wardrobe with this pink silk.”

They could indeed just imagine all sorts of garments made with this particularly gorgeous silk. The shade of pink was like flowers in spring, the inside of a conch shell, like a woman’s cheeks after a man whispered all the wicked and wonderful things he wanted to do with her.

It was a universally flattering shade of pink, as one could see as each woman passed it around and held it up to her face and somehow it made everyone look younger and happier and healthier. Daisy Prescott was giving it particular consideration, likely using her scientific brain to distill the what and how and why of this particular shade. Probably so she could invent a shade of lip paint or rouge to match.

“Anything made with this would be a delight,” Harriet said. “And I hate pink.”

“No!” Beatrice cried, her cheeks a shade of this very pink, though perhaps with a shade more fury. “We cannot make anything with it!”

“What’s the problem? It’s lovely.”

“That is the problem. It is loveliness in fabric form. I want to remake my wardrobe and reupholster all the furniture in my house with it. I want to make flags to fly from every flagpole in the city with it. But it is exclusive to Dalton’s.”

Oh. A sudden cold hush swept over the women. What dreadful news. Because if it was exclusive to Dalton’s that meant they could not buy it, not without jeopardizing the investment they’d all made in Goodwin’s, and their commitment to Beatrice’s store and the sisterhood. Not without making their fearless leader wear this public display of submission.

“Oh, that is a problem,” Ava said. As she looked longingly at the swatch.

In an effort to have their pink and wear it, too, one woman suggested a possible solution. “Perhaps you can go to the mill and negotiate your own purchase! Perhaps you could even get it for less than Dalton’s.”

“Margaret and I first sent word from John Washington. And when even he couldn’t close the deal, I made the journey myself to the mill upstate only to learn that it is exclusively made for Dalton because he owns the factory.”

“Oh, that’s very clever,” Harriet said. The rest of the women murmured their concern.

“It is, isn’t it? Which makes it all the more enraging.”

Beatrice flopped back on the settee. Someone handed her a fortifying cup of tea and someone else handed her an entire plate of pastries, bless her. This might just get her through the afternoon.

She was at once exhilarated and exhausted from the day-to-day business of running the store. There was so much to manage! The ledgers and the orders and the rivalries between salesgirls and departments and establishing new displays. It was a far cry from all those days she swanned about the castle, trying to find something to do.

And now this!

She was about to be undone by pink silk.

It would be the death of her business, her dreams, her.

Beatrice had gotten used to success. And there was no denying she was a success—the store was busy, the sales were brisk, the chatter among women was favorable,