by Maya Rodale
It was only a matter of time before they came face-to-face near the windows leading out to the terrace.
It felt like he’d waited his whole life for this moment.
“Good evening, Beatrice.”
“Oh, hello, Dalton.”
God, she had a way of saying “oh, hello, Dalton” that somehow belied all they were to each other—former lovers, present competitors, shared owners of a secret history.
“I heard a rumor that you have fired your entire staff,” he said. “Shocking news. One would think it smart to keep the more experienced staff and yet I don’t doubt your intelligence.”
“I haven’t fired the entire staff,” she replied. “Some of the women I have promoted.”
“So it’s essentially true,” he said. “You’re either reckless or ruthless.”
“I’m playing to win. Let that sink in.” She took a sip of champagne and defiantly met his gaze. She was resolute. He was intrigued, in spite of himself. “I would think you’d be rejoicing at what everyone is calling a foolish thing to do, but perhaps you think I’ve made a shrewd move?”
“You might have done something smart,” Dalton replied. “Women do tend to work harder than men and for half the wages.”
“Do you really pay the women in your employ less than the men?”
“How do you think I got to be one of the richest men in Manhattan?” Dalton remarked.
She did not laugh. A man would have laughed.
“Are you actually proud of having earned your fortune off the backs of hardworking, underpaid people? You should know better.”
He felt his temperature flare at the mention of his humble origins, which he had taken care to conceal from most of the people in this room. People who were watching them avidly. The rivalry between them had graced the gossip pages.
“What I’m proud of is learning the rules of the game, playing to win, and succeeding.”
Almost.
Beatrice did not seem impressed.
He thought again of the beautiful rare birds that were slaughtered so he could sell feathered hats. Give the women what they want. He thought of the shopgirls deprived of higher wages in the name of market rates. Give the women what they want? Birds and women sacrificed so he could stand in a ballroom, sip champagne, and feel important.
The flash of insight was inconvenient and uncomfortable, so he ignored it.
“Without staff, you do realize you’ll have to shut down the store,” he pointed out. “For days. Weeks. It’ll take that long until you fill all the positions and get everyone trained up. In the meantime you’ll lose money and I’ll make more. So much more that you won’t have a prayer of bringing Goodwin’s back to life.”
He would buy it for some throwaway sum. Destroy it.
This is what he wanted.
My name is Wes Dalton. You stole my love and insulted my honor. I have sworn revenge.
But she was smirking at him.
“I should think that would be good news for you. So why, Dalton, do you sound like you’re trying to talk me out of it?”
“I’m not trying to talk you out of it. I’ve been waiting sixteen years for the Goodwin siblings to run the store into the ground. But it wouldn’t be very sporting of me to win by letting you make some egregious and disastrous mistakes.”
“What a hollow victory that would be,” she replied.
“Exactly.”
“It would make your revenge just that less sweet,” she teased.
“Indeed.”
“Or are you procrastinating because you haven’t made your plans for after?” That hint of a smile again. Like she was teasing him. Another man might have felt angry. He felt the thrill of a challenge.
“I’m more interested in your plans. Are you certain you know what you’re doing? Are you certain you don’t wish to sell? I’ll strike a deal with you, right here. Right now.”
“Dalton, this is hardly proper ballroom conversation,” she chided him. “If you really want to make a serious offer, you’ll make an appointment to speak with me in my office. Privately.”
He had visions of her in an office.
Up against a desk. Lips tilted up to his. Soft laughter, not the mocking kind.
No, he would not make an appointment to speak privately with her in her office.
“But then again, it took a lot for us to both get here,” she mused. “To have inappropriate ballroom conversation.”
And just like that, things took a turn for the personal.
“All I had to do was earn a fortune from nothing.”
“Not nothing, Dalton,” she said pointedly. “There was that three thousand dollars that my parents gave you not to marry me. Hardly an insignificant amount of money.”
“That old news? You had already accepted the duke and you wanted me to stay in town and watch it all unfold?”
“My mother thought you were such a temptation to me that she had to pay you to leave town. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“It does now. Much too late.”
“Much too late, indeed. You have already revealed that all you ever wanted was Goodwin’s. Your obsession with buying it now only confirms it. You never wanted me, just the store.”
“And the duke was not after your fortune?”
“He never pretended to love me.”
Her words landed like a slap across the face.
“Is that what you think? That my feelings had just been an act? That I bared my body and soul to you with an ulterior motive? It was never pretend, Beatrice.”
She tilted her head curiously. “Then why did you take it?”
“Why did you say yes to him?”
“A marriage proposal from a duke was an offer I wasn’t allowed to refuse. Tell me, Dalton, how a young girl is supposed to reject the one thing she was born and bred to do, especially when she had no other options?”
“Tell me, Beatrice, how a young man with few opportunities is supposed to say no to a life-changing windfall?”
“Well you certainly didn’t squander it. There is that, at least. You may have even gotten the better end of the deal.”
No, he had not squandered it. But he wondered what she meant by “the better end of the deal.”
For the first time since her return to New York, Dalton stopped to think about what she must have endured to get back here to this ballroom. Divorce wasn’t unheard of, but it was still rare, especially among the sort of people in this ballroom. For a woman to refuse a duke was nearly unheard of. He wondered what life was like that she became so desperate to risk such a great scandal.
What she must have suffered through to prove she deserved it.
His heart suffered a pang for what the girl he once loved had lived through.
If only she’d chosen me instead.
But it was too late for thoughts like that.
“I know everyone thinks I’m a scandalous failure of a woman,” she said with a shrug. “But I actually find it quite liberating. I have lived too long trying to please other people, I now wish only to please myself.”
“I’ve been underestimating you, haven’t I?” Dalton said.
“You and the rest of the world.”
“I’ll admit I’m curious to see what you’ll do next.”
She smiled, a wicked smile, and he felt it like an arrow to his heart. Somehow, they had moved close together—pressed close by the crowds, drawn together. So close he could feel the heat of her, breathe in the faint scent of her perfume.
“Are you saying you’ve got your eyes on me, Dalton?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he murmured.
And his gaze locked with hers and for a second it felt like they were eighteen again, which is to say a yearning so intense that the rest of the world could have fallen away and he wouldn’t have noticed. All of a sudden, all at once, it felt like the years hadn’t happened. And he could, maybe, reach out and tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, whisper a secret, press his lips to
hers, laugh about something funny only to them. How could she have ever doubted him?
“But you won’t give up on your plans for revenge, will you?”
“Not when I’m so. Damned. Close.”
Chapter Fifteen
The Goodwin Residence
One West Thirty-Fourth Street
The next day
One did not expect to have callers at breakfast, especially when one dined as early as Beatrice did. As a duchess, she lolled in bed, reading newspapers. As president of a struggling department store, she glanced at them over tea and toast at what her mother termed an ungodly early hour.
Nevertheless she had a caller at breakfast.
Wes Dalton himself.
For all the hours they’d spent together in their youth, it had never been in the dining room. They stole moments together in back rooms and broom closets, stockrooms and secret stairways. Later, when their love had blossomed and desire couldn’t be constrained, he’d snuck into her bedroom after hours.
Now he had come calling and she was about to entertain him in the dining room. Unchaperoned. And it would be acceptable.
The perks of being a divorcée.
It was curious, though, that he should come calling. Any business they might have could be conducted at their respective offices. She couldn’t imagine that they had personal business to discuss at home. They certainly hadn’t ceded any ground to each other at the ball last night, though she might have felt something like temptation. Being so near to him brought the memories back. They were not unpleasant. Quite the contrary.
And Dalton did cut a fine figure in his evening attire, and his focused gaze on her made her feel like the only woman in the world and that was something. When she teased and provoked him, he didn’t get angry and storm off. She was herself with him, for better or for worse and he didn’t disparage her for it.
Now that was the stuff of romance and seduction.
Therein lay danger and temptation. Worse yet: distraction.
She could not afford distraction.
She had ideas about the store that she had begun to implement, especially now that she’d gotten Mr. Stevens out of the way. Things were proceeding at pace once she had removed him and the other naysayers and staffed their positions with spirited men and women who did not even know The Way Things Were Always Done and who were keen to do something new. There were renovations to embark on, new merchandise to select and stock, dazzling displays to dream up and make real.
Which is to say, she was excited to get to work.
But first, Dalton.
“Hello, Dalton. Twice in one week. Making up for lost time I suppose.”
“Hello, Beatrice.”
She sat at the head of the dining table and he took the chair to her right. For a brief second she was struck with the impression of him and her as man and wife. At home, breakfasting together. It was so intimate, that.
She offered him tea. He accepted.
Business, she reminded herself.
In a low voice she asked, “Are you here for revenge? Shall I hide the knives?”
She gestured to a lone butter knife on the table between them.
He smiled wryly. “I deserve that.”
“Yes. You do. Are you? Or perhaps you are here to confess your nefarious plans just before you expire, in the way of all storybook villains.”
“I’m young, in good health, and have no aspirations to be a villain.”
“I could have poisoned the tea,” she said. “I’m not saying I did. Just that I could have.”
“Maybe we ought to have a chaperone after all. To protect myself.”
“You’re safe. It’s one thing for me to be a divorcée, a murderess would be going a touch too far, don’t you think?”
“One hopes. As it happens I’m here in a somewhat professional capacity.”
“Oh? If you’ve come to talk me out of the store or make me an offer for sale, you can take it and yourself right back downtown.”
“And miss the spectacle? Prodigal daughter returns home, disbands with drunken brother, and attempts to bring faded department store back to life? I wouldn’t dream of missing that. I’ve come to even the playing field.”
Beatrice eyed him suspiciously.
He appeared to be earnest. It was a good look on him. Drat the man.
“I’ve come to give you this,” he said as he reached into his jacket pocket for a slip of paper that he offered to her.
Beatrice took it. Looked at it. Her anger flared. Instantly.
“This is a check for three thousand dollars.”
“It is.”
“If you think you can just buy me off—” she said hotly. If he had to make her an insulting overture he could at least give her a decent sum that recognized her worth. Three thousand dollars! From the man who had the third greatest fortune in New York. Why she ought to have poisoned the tea or resorted to some violence—
“Three thousand dollars is the amount of money your parents gave me to disappear. The amount of money they gave me which I used to start my first business selling imported Irish linens and lace. This—along with hard work and a decent amount of luck—was what I made my fortune out of. I thought it only fair you get the same.”
“Oh.” She felt herself deflate. She took a moment to make sense of it. Her rival was here to be fair?
“But I’m also giving it back because I have not disappeared and I have no intention of doing so.”
“Ah, I see. You are no longer going to abide by the original terms. This is to be a fight, but a fair one. You have no other motive.”
“None. See what you can do with it. Make no mistake, this is not an attempt to woo you.”
“Good.”
“I am compelled by honor. Notions of fair play.”
“How noble of you.”
“I have no intentions of resuming any intimacies or feelings we might have once had,” he said, and her vanity had thoughts about that.
“I, as well.”
“So please, don’t romanticize it too much. It will make my inevitable revenge all the more sweet to know that it was something of a fair fight.”
His gaze connected with hers. Blue eyes hot and fixed on hers. She understood. He loved the fight. He loved the challenge. He loved the fire of fury and that was what kept him up at night and powered him through the day. Maybe he was after revenge, or maybe he just wanted to be the best. This was not an attempt to woo; she would not be wooed. This was not meant to insult her, either. He was raising the stakes.
Well. Two could play at that game.
Beatrice handed the check back to him.
“My parents gave you three thousand dollars sixteen years ago. If one adjusts for inflation this should be more.”
His eyes flashed.
She didn’t try to hide her smile.
“Not just a pretty face, am I? But do go on thinking so. It will make my work so much easier.”
Dalton stood just then and Beatrice turned to see that her mother had swept into the dining room. Her lips were pinched together and her eyes asked what the devil the likes of him was doing sipping tea at her dining table at this hour.
“He’s here on business, Mother. He’s paying us back. I do believe you and Papa gave him three thousand dollars to go away. As you can see, he has not. So he has come to return the money.”
The tension in the room was thick. Because while Manhattan might not know his past, or not care about it, Mrs. Goodwin knew. She had not forgotten.
“It was a trifling sum to prove my point that he was just a fortune hunter and, as such, beneath your matrimonial considerations. I’ve spent more on forks for dinner parties,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “By accepting the money he proved that he was unsuitable.”
Beatrice didn’t miss the flash of anger in his eyes.
“One might argue it has made me into a suitable candidate. I have wealth, a fine home, a lucrative and reliable income, prestige. Was it just the fortune I was lacking,
Mrs. Goodwin, or did you take issue with something else?”
Beatrice waited for her mother to explain something else but Estella swept out of the room, as if she could not endure such discomfort in the morning. It didn’t escape her notice that her mother still did not approve of him, which was just as well; Beatrice had no notion of anything more than this with Dalton. Business, only.
But the way he looked at her didn’t make her think of just business.
The private parlor
The minute the door closed on Dalton, Beatrice rushed off to find her mother in the parlor where she was sipping tea and sorting through a stack of invitations and correspondence.
“What was that all about?”
“I could ask you the same thing, Beatrice.”
“It was a business matter. Though it felt personal. I’m not sure what to make of it.” She peeked out the window. “He’s gone now, and he’s taken his check with him.”
“Edward was too blind with drink to see it, but I wasn’t. Your father was too distracted with other work matters to see it, but I wasn’t. And you . . . you had stars in your eyes that blinded you all the same. Dalton only ever wanted one thing and one thing only—our store. I hate to see how he used you to get it.”
“I won’t let him.”
“But that is all you’ll be able to do. Fight and resist him at every turn. It will take all of your time and focus. You’ll have little time for anything else. Until Edward returns.”
“How is my darling brother? Any word?”
“Remarkably he is not inclined to write us long letters detailing how he spends his days,” her mother said drily.
“It’s not like he has much else to do,” Beatrice muttered in the manner of a petulant fourteen-year-old girl and not a grown woman of six and thirty.
“He must focus on getting well, Beatrice,” her mother said gently, with motherly concern.
“I do wish him the best.”
Edward had not gone enthusiastically or even entirely willingly to Dr. Barnacle’s Restorative Home. But he’d been too ill with drink to put up much of a resistance, which in Beatrice’s opinion meant he definitely ought to stay for an extended visit under the doctor’s care and guidance.