An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,17
tell them I gave you this amount. They’ll match it.”
“Are you certain?”
“There is nothing more reliable than male ego’s desperate need to impress.”
Finally, she smiled. Genuinely smiled. “You don’t need to convince me of that.”
When she didn’t quite move to leave, he asked, “Is there anything else?”
“Thank you, Mr. Dalton. I hope you are not too lonely on your own in this big house.”
It was his turn to smile politely, to give no indication of the tumult her words inspired.
While she may have been impressed or intimidated, while she may have gotten the message that he was a Very Impressive Person, she still thought he might be lonely. She might pity him. She insinuated that he did not, in fact, have it all. Or enough. Or the right thing. It was a peculiar feeling he hadn’t experienced in years, that of wanting something.
Besides Goodwin’s, that is. And revenge.
“After the bustle of the store, I find the quiet uptown a welcome respite.”
“Of course. And if you ever do get lonely, please know that you are always welcome to visit us at the Orchard Street Settlement House.”
“Thank you for the kind invitation.” They both knew he was unlikely to ever do it. She didn’t understand that he couldn’t bring himself to return to the place he hadn’t stopped running from.
Chapter Eight
The Goodwin Residence
One West Thirty-Fourth Street
Later that evening
Beatrice returned home, shaking with nerves and excess energy, equal parts exhaustion and exhilaration. She hadn’t felt this much in years. The sheer quantity of emotion pulsing through her veins threatened to overwhelm her. She might have to lie down. Except she could not sit still.
It was quite a change from all those endless, empty years at the castle when she had honestly wondered if one could die of boredom.
What a day.
Of course Dalton’s had to be the Wesley Dalton. Her Dalton! Her one and only, once upon a time. Her heart had been full of anguish when she had accepted the duke’s proposal because it was The Right Thing To Do and what a Good Girl would do. She hadn’t regretted not running off with Wes—especially when he was revealed to be a fortune hunter—but she had lamented the stark choices she’d been forced into. But it was nothing compared to her heart breaking when she’d learned that all Wes had ever really wanted from her was Goodwin’s—why else would he have taken her mother’s offer of money to disappear?
Why else would he reappear now, ready to buy it? And he’d been smoldering about it for years, too. It was positively tragic—and terribly inconvenient.
Now he was to be her rival. She had taken a good look in his eyes, blue and stormy as ever, and saw the anger there. He’d been nurturing that anger, holding that grudge, for sixteen years.
He wanted her store.
He had always wanted her store.
He would stop at nothing to make it his.
And it would be her store, if she had anything to do with it and she did.
She had summoned every last ounce of her courage and her every last nerve to blaze into that boardroom and declare, in no uncertain terms, that there would be no sale.
It had been exhilarating.
And now she had to dress and go down to dinner.
In the dining room, Beatrice had scarcely taken a sip of wine when Edward stumbled in and dropped into his chair. She caught a waft of whiskey; he had already had a drink or two it seemed. Even seated at the head of the table, he didn’t look any more commanding here than he had in the boardroom.
A servant immediately and wordlessly placed a glass of spirits on the table.
Edward’s hand closed around the glass while he shot her a murderous glare.
“I have never been so humiliated in my life.”
“Does that include the time you got so drunk you fell off your horse and wet yourself at the Osgoods’ house party in 1881?”
“Beatrice!” her mother exclaimed.
“Do you know what she did today, Mother?”
“This soup is delicious,” Estella said. “Try the soup, everyone.”
“She interrupted my board meeting and refused a very good offer to buy Goodwin’s.”
“Beatrice!” her mother gasped again.
“It was a necessary interruption. Did you know, Mother, that our agreement is required for any sale of the company? The gentlemen of the board seemed either ignorant of the fact or unconcerned about upholding the rule of law. It was a good thing I had consulted a lawyer about it,” Beatrice said.