An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,75

there while they had been intimate. They would have been close enough to hear. Or perhaps even see.

Beatrice turned away, revolted by the invasion of her privacy. But the fury bubbled up swiftly. How dare someone violate her sacred space, her privacy, her domain?

Again. This hadn’t been the first time someone had snuck into the store to make mischief. But this was the first time she had been so terrifyingly close to it.

“Beatrice . . .”

But she was already bustling toward the closet where the cleaning things were kept and getting scraps of old cloth and soap and water to wash it off before the paint dried and settled in permanently. It wouldn’t do for the staff to arrive first thing and see this.

Seeing the words whore go home painted on the door was no way to start the day.

Even though the hour was late, even though her lips were still warm and tingling from Dalton’s kiss, she started to furiously scrub and scrub and scrub. The repetitive motion of cleaning soothed her; the immediately apparent effect of her efforts gave her back some sense of power and control.

And Dalton. Well, Dalton wasn’t a man to stand idly by. Wordlessly, he picked up a cloth and started cleaning the higher parts where she couldn’t reach. Side by side they worked, neither one of them remarking that this was hardly the evening plans they’d had in mind but nevertheless here they were.

And then it was all clean, like it had never happened, except it had.

“Are you all right?” Dalton asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Actually fine or the way ladies say they’re fine when they are actually experiencing a multitude of powerful emotions?”

“Yes, that one. Fine.”

“I see.” He was looking at her, she could feel it. She could feel his gaze searching every inch of her face, looking for the truth. And lowered her gaze. She didn’t miss the sharp intake of his breath as he realized the truth.

“It wasn’t the first time was it?”

“How did you know?”

“Someone smashed the mirrors. I was there.”

“Right. I had forgotten.”

He raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “I read about the vandalism to your reading room.”

“Not the sort of news I hope to make.”

“There were more. So many that you could forget one. Or even two.”

Beatrice shrugged. “A few incidences here and there. Rude statements painted on walls of my office, broken typewriters, broken mirrors, that sort of thing. Idiotic pranks of an irate employee, most likely. We have Detective Hyde on the case.”

Detective Hyde was operating in disguise in the store. It gave Beatrice peace of mind to know that someone was handling this so that she could handle everything else.

“Beatrice, it could be more than that.”

“Nonsense. We are just women. We are just shopping.”

“We both know there is no just about it. Think of what you represent, Beatrice.”

“That again.” She rolled her eyes.

Beatrice the Beacon. Hold her up and shine a light and make an example of her.

Like she wasn’t a living breathing woman who just wanted an occupation that engaged her mind during the day and a man who engaged her body at night.

“Think of who stands to benefit if you were . . . scared off. Because, Beatrice, you have made the business vibrant and profitable again.”

She couldn’t say it and he was too much of a gentleman to make her. Edward. Her own brother. He had sufficient motive. But he was locked away at a sanitarium in Long Island. Wasn’t he?

If it wasn’t Edward, it could be any one of the ego-wounded former employees of the old incarnation of Goodwin’s. Mr. Stevens, for example. It could be any number of men who were not hired in favor of women.

It could be any of the other department store owners—Macy, Fields, Wanamaker—who were jealous of her success and her prominence on The White List, which had overnight altered where Manhattan’s women shopped.

“You are also, day by day, empowering a multitude of women. Beatrice, you are changing the game. And not everyone wants to change the game.”

Not like him. Dalton rose to the occasion of her challenge like he was born for it, like it was a shock to the heart he needed to stay alive, like it was his idea of a good time to try harder. She was the bucket of water on everyone’s fire, but to him she was the fuel that made the flames go higher.

She could almost love him for it.

Maybe she was even on the verge of really feeling something like love