An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,67

the weight off his shoulders.

He had not been alone. He had not wanted for company. But he been lonely.

“You were not the only one who had been lonely, Beatrice. You were not the only one hungering for touch and a connection. I’ve had all the success a man could dream of, and it’s still not enough. What I’m missing is the connection I feel when I’m with you.”

She was still. She was listening.

And the tension in his chest was easing.

He was actually saying these things. It was terrifying, exhilarating, and wonderful. It was like driving that automobile at top speed with the top down on a wide-open road. Like riding a bicycle down a country road and being aware for the first time of how limited you’d been your whole life and had never even known it. Until it was just you and the wheel and the wind in your hair.

“But men—” Beatrice protested.

“Tell me about men, Beatrice.”

“It’s just bodies. It’s just a driving need. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Lies. All lies,” Dalton said, spilling the secret that men had been perpetuating for centuries. “Maybe we also want it to mean something.”

“Well, you have a funny way of showing it,” she retorted.

“True,” Dalton admitted. “Men are idiots.”

Beatrice was silent for a moment, clearly thinking, and he made himself stay still with that silence.

“So as for our rivals by day, lovers by night . . . what does this mean for us? I still cannot wear the silk,” she said and he heard the question in her voice. Revelations about his feelings and humanity were all well and good but what did it mean for him and her in the here and now?

“What if I want more, Bea? What if I want more than a tumble in a store bed? What if I want more than a rivalry and more than revenge?”

There was a full-size bed right there. Made up in the finest linens and cashmere blankets and down feather pillows. Beatrice was the boss—she could order everyone away to afford them privacy.

“But, Wes, what if that’s all I want?”

That slayed him. Right there in the middle of housewares, while leaning up against a finely crafted chest of drawers. What if this—a tumble in a department store bedroom, with a woman who only wanted a diversion—was the highest peak he could ever reach?

How positively tragic.

But Dalton was not ready to admit defeat, even if his concept of what it meant to win or lose was rapidly evolving.

“I have a proposal for you,” he said and he had to laugh at the panic in her eyes. “Nothing serious,” he quickly clarified. “One night. You, me, New York City. Let’s leave our competition aside and just enjoy each other’s company and see where things go.”

“I believe the word you’re looking for is courtship.”

“I believe you’re right. What do you say?”

Chapter Twenty-seven

The Goodwin Residence

One West Thirty-Fourth Street

The next day

That evening Beatrice had plans. Plans which were best described simply as Wes Dalton. Her twenty-year-old self was thrilled at the prospect of a romantic evening out on the town with him—without a chaperone, too. Ah, the perks of being a scandalously divorced duchess!

But present-day Beatrice felt somewhat conflicted. She was on fire with anticipation to be with him, bare her body and soul to him. But it was clear he wanted more than that from her, more than she wanted to give.

But she had promised him a chance to woo her.

Tonight was the night.

A crash of contrary feelings were roiling within her as she stood at the drawing room window, peering out, waiting for the moment of his arrival so she could slip out without him coming to the drawing room.

Because Beatrice wasn’t alone. Her mother sat near the fire, embroidering.

“You are all dressed up, Beatrice. What are your plans for the evening? I thought you declined the invitation from one of the Vanderbilt brothers.”

“I did.”

Beatrice paused, debating whether to share her real plans for the evening. It would be easy enough to say that she was joining some lady friends at a lecture or dinner party. But the truth was near to bursting out of her chest so she had to say something.

“I’m going out with Wes Dalton this evening.”

Her mother did not even look up from her embroidery. “Interesting hour for a business meeting.”

Beatrice kept her gaze focused on the window.

“I don’t think it’s quite entirely business.”

“Ah. I see.”

And so an awkward silence ensued. Admitting to one’s mother that one was having an affair