An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,80

didn’t regret it, but she certainly felt a sharp pang of something like loneliness, even in the middle of Goodwin’s on a busy day.

There must have been thousands of people around her in the store but still she felt lonely.

Beatrice refused to dwell on it; instead she continued her tour through the store.

On the mezzanine of the grand central staircase, the Ladies of Liberty had established a table where they were soliciting signatures on a petition demanding women’s right to vote. Women paused in the midst of their shopping to hear impassioned speeches about the rights they ought to have, as law-abiding and tax-paying citizens.

Something to think about between trying on gloves and underthings and purchasing packets of buttons and the new style of hat.

“How many names have you gotten so far today?” Beatrice asked.

“Hundreds at least,” Harriet answered.

“And it’s only one o’clock. We haven’t even had the afternoon rush yet.”

She ought to take a break from making her rounds of the store, but with Detective Hyde home sick—she’d worked herself into a fever—she didn’t want to risk missing anything. Just in case. Hyde’s warnings and Dalton’s storming around, shouting about her safety had rattled her.

She couldn’t let anything bad happen to this store.

Beatrice had once felt so powerless and disconnected. But now she had this marvelous space, where she could be the brightest version of herself. She had friends in the Ladies of Liberty who encouraged and supported her.

Now that she no longer had her nights with Dalton, this space was all she had.

This loud, boisterous, beautiful shop.

Amidst all the sounds of the store it was difficult to hear the first screams. It was hard to discern them among the swell of the string section in the orchestra, the cries for “Votes for women!” from the suffragists or the sound of hundreds of women asking a friend, “Should I get this dress, this corset, these gloves?”

The cries quickly increased in volume until there was no mistaking them.

“Fire!”

“Fire?” Beatrice looked questioningly at Harriet, who appeared concerned but unruffled.

It was only when Margaret bustled over, struggling to maintain a calm outward appearance, that Beatrice felt a cold knot in the pit of her stomach.

“I don’t want to alarm you,” she began but Beatrice was already alarmed. “There’s a fire in the basement. I’ve rung for the fire department and they are on their way, but we should evacuate everyone just to be safe.”

“Fire?”

“Fire.”

Instead of the fragrance of fresh flowers, Beatrice breathed in the faint fragrance of smoke. Among the chatter, she started to hear the snap and crackle of a roaring fire. If she could hear it here, on the mezzanine, then it was not just a fire in the basement. She could hear the dull roar of it, smell its presence, and there was no denying it was roaring up hard and fast.

All around the store, one could see women pausing, wondering. Do I smell smoke? Is there a fire?

Yes and yes and they all started moving toward the doors en masse. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Clinging to friends and children and recently bought packages. Hundreds of them, thousands of them, spread across six floors, all vying for the same exit on the ground floor.

“Margaret, open the doors. Break the windows. Do whatever is necessary to get everyone outside.”

Beatrice turned to go upstairs, and it was slow going against the direction of the crowd.

“What are you doing?”

“To calmly request our customers leave. Immediately.”

Beatrice decided she would start at the top floor and make the rounds, and with the manner of a society matron hosting afternoon tea, graciously ask her customers to leave. Even though her heart felt lodged in her throat and she felt like she would be sick, right here near the display of bicycles she had fought so hard for.

But she was a debutante and a duchess and so she knew how to move through a crowd, radiating peace and loveliness no matter what she felt inside.

Please proceed calmly to the exit.

Please do take the stairs.

Please move with haste, but no need to worry!

But flames and smoke and screams of alarm outpaced her. She could hear the roar of the fire, coming up from the depths, she could hear the stampede of women and their shouts of alarm. She glanced down and saw the flames working their way through the millinery section, onward to ladies attire on the third floor.

She heard screams.

And she knew, oh God she knew, that this was the end of Goodwin’s.

Everyone had

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