An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,7

fleet of shopgirls moved into position, at the ready to cheerfully divest customers of their money. The air was pitched with the sound of women’s chattering voices, exclaiming over the carefully selected and displayed merchandise. What a sensual riot those displays were: a stunning array of colors, scents, and textures. All designed to tempt, to seduce, to conquer. All around him women bought and sold and wanted and craved. Money changed hands.

It was the background noise to his life.

Yet it could not drown out the drumbeat of his heart or the voice in his head repeating: She’s back. She’s back. She’s back.

Somewhere on this island. Beatrice was back. Walking on the same earth. Breathing the same air. Just being near. The thought affected him more than he liked. He shoved it aside, repeating instead his all too familiar refrain of the past sixteen years.

My name is Wes Dalton. You stole my love and insulted my honor. I have sworn revenge.

“Friday, my friend. The moment you’ve been waiting for.” Connor clapped his back and made his exit.

Soon, revenge would be his. There was no way he’d allow Beatrice to complicate it. If anything, it only made his inevitable revenge sweeter that she would be here to watch it.

Chapter Four

The House of Adeline

Later that day

“I have nothing to wear,” Beatrice declared.

She stood in the House of Adeline, the dressmaker of Manhattan society according to the periodicals lying around the house, mentions in the gossip columns, and the advertisements in the newspapers. The dressmaker, Adeline herself, a petite woman with dark hair and mischievous eyes, appraised her in the mirror that they stood before.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. I left nearly all of my gowns in England. Now that I’m no longer a duchess, they simply won’t suit. I’m no longer a debutante. I need an entirely new wardrobe for the woman I am determined to be.”

“And who are you determined to be?” Adeline asked.

“Not a wife, that’s for certain,” Beatrice answered. “My family wishes for me to find another husband. But I only just escaped the first one and I’m determined not to return to that gilded cage.”

“So we are not dressing you to make a match. We’re dressing you for you.”

“Yes. Precisely. Whoever that is. I’m not certain I know anymore. However I do know that I am a divorced duchess returning to society, which is something of a scandal. All eyes will be on me.”

“So you must look sensational. Proud. Unapologetic.”

“Yes.” Beatrice breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time in a very long while, Beatrice felt seen. And taken seriously. “And I want to feel sensational. I have spent too many years feeling wrong. I always said the wrong thing, or nothing at all. My ex-husband married me for my money and womb and when I failed to deliver on one of the two, he never ceased to remind me of my failures and flaunt his infidelities. So I have felt lonely and aimless. Invisible and in the way, all at once.”

She paused here, feeling the dowager duchess and the duke horrified at the deluge of words she had just shared. And horror, too, that she had unburdened herself to a woman she had only just met.

“I’m so sorry,” Beatrice said. “I do not even know you and I am spilling forth my innermost secrets.”

“Please don’t apologize. There is nothing like the confidence between a woman and her dressmaker,” Adeline said. She set down the pale green and light blue fabric swatches she had selected and reached for vibrant reds and pinks instead. “It shall help me craft just the right wardrobe for you. If you are not going to wed, what will you do?”

That was the question.

Beatrice had an idea. Ever since Edward had said he was giving up on the store, she’d started dreaming about taking it over herself and proving that she could do better, that she could return it to the magical place it had once been.

Did she dare to say it aloud?

Would Adeline scoff at her the way her mother and Edward did this morning when she broached the subject? The dressmaker was a proprietor of her own establishment, so one had to think she would be amenable to women embarking on a business venture.

So she did.

She said the words.

“I have a mad scheme to take over my family’s department store.”

And oh, but that gleam in the dressmaker’s eye made Beatrice feel like maybe. And maybe was a new glorious feeling she hadn’t felt in a long