An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,79

good. Because he understood her and what made her tick in a way no one else ever had or likely ever would.

But she couldn’t go back to married life. She couldn’t give some man a say over what she did and with whom and where and why. She couldn’t give up that space in her brain to worry about him and what he might think and feel. And if they had children—

Some would call her selfish. Beatrice didn’t care. Why couldn’t she be selfish?

“I don’t want to give up my independence or my freedom, Dalton.”

“I wouldn’t keep you in a cage, Beatrice. Gilded or otherwise. I’m not like him. For better or for worse.”

“Oh, but it has already begun. Insisting I stay at your home, insisting on escorting me to and from work, insisting I do whatever you say so I can stay safe. To say nothing of the tug that I am already feeling.”

“The tug?”

“If we were wed, I would feel the tug to return home when I wanted to work. I would feel the tug to consider you and your feelings and us in every decision—even though I presume we would still be competitors?” She lifted one brow and he didn’t have an answer for that. “Suppose you wished for children? I don’t know that I can give that to you. But I know I would feel the tug to be home with them and not here. Dalton, I want to be here.”

She stood here. Behind her desk. In her office. Manhattan roaring outside her window. The floors below her hummed with female voices and feminine activity. Money and ideas and goods and services changed hands. Dreams were conceived and realized. Desires stoked and satisfied. And best of all, all these women had a space that wasn’t home to just . . . be.

It was everything she ever wanted and she had it.

But it seemed Dalton would be the price she paid for it.

Dalton gave a bitter laugh.

“All the money I have earned, all the prestige I have accumulated, all the power I have gained, all the years of dawn-till-dusk work and dusk-till-dawn social climbing. All so I could be your damned hero. And it seems I have dedicated my life to all the wrong things. It seems that I’m working off an old script trying to catch up with a new woman.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. And she was sorry. “It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing, Dalton. We don’t have to play by someone else’s rules. We don’t have to let anyone else dictate the terms of our happy-ever-after.”

“You’re a magnificent woman, Beatrice. I love you, Beatrice. Because I love you, I am terrified of losing you. Because I love you, I want more than stolen moments in elevators or quick tumbles in department-store beds. I want to hear your laughter echo in my foyer. I want to go to sleep and wake up next to you in my bed. I want a home. A life. A family. I want to feel that if my thousands of employees vanished tomorrow, I would still not be alone. Don’t you want that, too?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted and he left—taking the ring with him—and not for the first time did she sit down at her desk and cry.

Chapter Thirty-one

Goodwin’s Department Store

A few days later

Beatrice strolled through the sales floor of Goodwin’s, reveling in the chorus of women’s voices as they shopped and the strains of music played by an orchestra composed of entirely female musicians. Added to the mix was the clackety-clack of typewriters. There were dozens on display and customers were encouraged to try their hand at the machines and type whatever struck their fancy.

Beatrice loved looking at the notes. The paper sheets in the machines were full of lines and graphs about women’s lives, messages to friends, notes to lovers, missed connections. They were sought-after reading material in the reading room. On the fourth floor, there were evening classes teaching typing.

She paused and breathed it all in. This, this was what mattered. This was what she had sought to create. A space where women could live their fullest lives, dream big dreams, and make them come true. It had certainly been such a space for Beatrice. Because of Goodwin’s, she had everything she had ever craved: purpose and independence.

She had her freedom, too, but that had cost her. She wasn’t thinking about what it took to escape the duke, but how it had hurt to refuse Dalton. She