An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,23
other charities supporting women and the poor.”
Beatrice had expected them to wax poetical about how handsome he was: those sparkling blue eyes, the distinguished gray in his dark hair, his firm mouth. She hadn’t expected him to be so noble. Not when he was so ruthlessly seeking revenge. She felt confused. Worse, she felt intrigued.
“And when he looks at a woman, he looks like he’s really listening to her.”
“Yes, and not scanning the room for someone prettier, thinner, or richer.”
And so they went on about how he asked thoughtful questions and listened to the answer, and smelled really good and probably remembered birthdays, too. His store was always a beautiful, brightly lit refuge for women. Beatrice struggled to reconcile this man who’d tried to seduce her for her store and disappeared when her parents paid him off. The one who’d tried to buy her birthright for a song, just so he could shut it down. The one who was hell-bent on revenge.
Drat, now she was intrigued.
“I cannot be seen going into his shop. However, I can certainly take a tour of all the other stores on the Ladies’ Mile.”
“You really can’t miss Dalton’s. Not if you want to know who your main competitor is. After all, his department store is right across the street from yours.”
A fact of which she was painfully aware. It was there, looming over her when she arrived in the morning and left exhausted each night. It was a six-story marble reminder that she could not fail.
“You said you cannot be seen going into his shop,” Harriet said shrewdly. “But is there a time he isn’t there?”
“Even if there is, he’ll certainly have people who will notice her and report back to him that she was there.”
“What I’m hearing is that she needs a disguise.”
“What, like a pirate?” Beatrice quipped.
“There is a deplorable lack of lady pirates running around the island of Manhattan,” Harriet said.
“We can all agree on that,” Ava said.
“We do have the power to change that,” one woman said, and there were conspiratorial smiles and laughter all around suggesting that when a fleet of lady pirates attacked the docks, Beatrice would know exactly who was behind it.
She imagined it and she laughed.
The other women did, too, all their voices blending together in a roar of mirth.
And something happened: the pressure in her chest eased.
Between the pressures of being a duchess, the strain of trying to obtain her divorce, the uncertainty of her future as a scandalous divorcée, and now the drama surrounding Edward, Dalton, and the store, Beatrice hadn’t had a moment to just breathe.
But here was a space that she could just be, where the conversation could flow from professional ambitions to handsome men to lady pirates.
The other women wanted her to succeed. For better or for worse. It was an enormous amount of weight to carry on her shoulders but they would also help her carry it.
This was what Beatrice had been missing in her marriage—support and friendship. The other peeresses had never really welcomed the lowborn, new-money American into their intimate circles. This is what she’d been missing as a debutante; all the other women were in competition with her for husbands.
When the laughter faded out, when the teacups had been refilled, when Beatrice had availed herself of another cookie simply because she wanted one, Ava turned to her and said, “So you must go shopping. And then you’ll know what to do.”
Just go shopping.
The great advice of this audacious ladies’ collective was to “just go shopping.” It was not quite offered in the pat-on-the-head, buy-yourself-something-pretty way of patronizing men everywhere.
But still.
Her exhilaration was somewhat diminished. But it seemed rude to convey that, so she said brightly that she should best be on her way. The Ladies’ Mile wouldn’t walk and shop itself. They said their goodbyes and accepted the invitation to come again and went out to collect their hats.
Harriet caught up with her in the foyer a moment later, before she left.
She clasped her hand.
“I know this may all seem daunting to you, Beatrice. But think of what you can do for womankind from such a lofty position.”
If she could just get her employees to listen to her.
“I am considering it, Harriet. That is what makes it all the more daunting.”
And just like that, going up against the boy who broke her heart and the man who was the retail king of New York was the least of it. All the girls were watching her. Counting on her.