An Heiress to Remember

by Maya Rodale

  They were a tangle of limbs and kisses and bedding. Touching all the soft parts of her, tasting her bare skin, exploring what made her sigh. Remembering and rediscovering all the things they once knew about each other. Beatrice still laughed nervously when his hot trail of kisses on her belly went lower and lower still. And then she wasn’t laughing but her breath was shallow and quick and wanting.

  “Let me please you, Bea,” he said quietly, hovering slightly above her and desperately wanting nothing more than to make her forget all that submitting and enduring and to chase away the cold she’d told him about. And she said yes.

  She sighed, “Yes,” as her soft thighs opened to him.

  Dalton felt another, sharper pang in his chest as she lay herself bare to him. She was making herself vulnerable. That word again. Trusting that he was going to be worth it. Forgiving. This was a second chance and he wasn’t going to waste it.

  She moaned when his lips touched the delicate skin of her inner thighs before moving slowly to the soft folds of her sex. He breathed her in and teased her, gentle at first, before he found the rhythm of his mouth and tongue that had her breathing hard and fast. She threaded her fingers through his hair, guiding him. He lost himself in the moment, aware of nothing but the exquisite taste of her and the sound of her breathing and how she was writhing now, moaning and demanding more because she was closer and closer to the brink.

  He didn’t stop. No, he intensified everything until he felt the climax rocket through her.

  When she cried out in pleasure, the sound echoed through all six stories of this marble palace.

  In an instant he realized he had done it all for her.

  Not for revenge.

  But to be worthy.

  And that took his breath away.

  “Hold me,” she said. He did, sinking into the soft, warm haven of her arms. His cock was hard and throbbing and feeling how she was wet and ready for him. Her lips claimed his for a deep kiss and he felt her hands press him closer to her.

  He wanted to be inside her. Be one with her. Surrender to this driving need to connect.

  But not even Beatrice in his arms and eager for him could make him forget where they were—a store, for God’s sake, where thousands of people passed through every day. He couldn’t forget that they weren’t just rivals or just lovers. Once upon a time, he thought she’d been the love of his life.

  And now?

  Maybe.

  “I want more of you, Wes.” She arched up to him, she pulled him closer. There was no mistaking what she wanted. “I want you inside me, Wes.”

  He wanted that, too. Desperately. Achingly. He was hard and throbbing for her and she was ready and willing.

  “I can’t,” he said, rolling to the side but still holding her. She was breathing hard in the silence.

  “Cannot or will not?” Beatrice asked in a small voice because they could both feel that he certainly could. If he wanted.

  Dalton turned to face her. He gently pushed a strand of hair away from her face and let his hand rest possessively on her waist.

  “When we do this, I want it to mean something, Beatrice.”

  “Oh,” she replied in a small voice that slayed him.

  He was laying himself bare to her. Removing his armor. Setting down his sword. And she only said “oh.”

  He felt that pang in his chest again, only this time it felt more like a knife than an extra hard beat of his heart.

  “I can’t promise you daytime things,” she said. “I can’t promise you lifetime things. But at night . . . Dalton, I can be yours.”

  “Can’t promise me or can’t promise anyone?”

  “If there’s anyone it’s you. But I want my freedom. I won’t be owned again.”

  He understood. This thing between them was too fragile and tenuous to be speaking of forever bonds. But something had been missing from his life and he had a hunch it was her and what they could possibly share together if things between them went a little further than an after-hours romp in a department store display bed.

  “Can I try to change your mind?”

  “You can try,” she said, and he saw her smile in the dim light. “I hope you do. Especially if it involves more of what we just did.”

  He pressed a kiss on her lips and said, “Challenge accepted.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Dalton’s Department Store

  Tonight they were in his office. Beatrice was perched upon his desk, looking remarkably at home in the space. They had nicked a bottle of champagne from the wine department, along with two crystal flutes from housewares.

  “I brought you a gift,” Dalton said, extending a box wrapped in a gorgeous pink ribbon. Wooing meant gifts. Flowers. Trinkets. Tokens of affection. But what did a man get for the woman who had everything, and could have anything she wanted?

  The one thing she couldn’t buy. Yet.

  “I am not opposed to gifts,” she said with a smile that did things to his heart.

  She eagerly unwrapped the package and breathed a soft ooooh when she saw what was inside: a few yards of a spectacular pink silk. It was soft to the touch, strong and light all the same. And it was a shade of pink like a woman’s secrets or like the flush of a woman’s skin after her climax. Strong and subtle all at once.

  It was a pink that he’d had invented and made just for her, with her in mind. All the peachy pink underthings in her shop hadn’t been vibrant enough to match her spirit.

  “Dalton, it’s lovely,” she sighed, clutching it to her chest. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “Make it up into whatever you want. Right now you’re the only woman in Manhattan who has it.”

  “Where did you find this?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  “A secret? We’ll see about that,” she murmured, setting the silk aside and pulling him close for a kiss.

  “It’s exclusive to Dalton’s,” he admitted.

  Her body stilled. She pushed him away.

  “Exclusive? You know I cannot wear this if it’s exclusive to your store. As the president of Goodwin’s, your chief rival, I cannot waltz around New York wearing the exclusive wares of my competitor. I’m not going to be a walking advertisement for you.”

  “For me or for us?” Dalton asked softly, but seriously.

  “Yes. Both. It’s impossible that I should be seen wearing it.”

  “Afraid of scandal?”

  “I’m afraid of being seen as yours. All the progress I have made to make the world see me as my own woman—not a debutante, not a duchess, not just a divorcée—will be undone. And I’ll just be Dalton’s woman and nothing more.”

  “So don’t wear it,” he murmured, pressing his lips to that spot on her neck that drove her wild. “Don’t wear anything at all.”

  He kissed her, like it was another one of their rendezvous and he hadn’t just asked her to do two appalling things with one gift of pink silk.

  His fingers found the edge of her dress, slid underneath to caress her skin and oh, she still yearned for his touch but . . .

  “Stop. I am too mad at you right now.”

  “Because of a little pink silk? It’s supposed to be a gift, from a man to his lover.”

  “It’s more than that and you know it. You are asking me to parade around in your flag like I’ve been conquered. I won’t be conquered.”

  “What happened to rivals by day, lovers by night?”

  “You blurred the lines. I have to go.”

  “Beatrice, wait—”

  She was gone. And she took the damned silk with her.

  25 West Tenth Street

  Two days later

  The Ladies of Liberty were meeting and sipping tea and plotting world domination as ladies were wont to do, when Beatrice stormed in late, skirts rustling and hat askew. She had the worst news.

  “Ladies we have a problem. A pink silk problem.”

  Beatrice pulled a swatch of the most gorgeous pink silk that had ev
er been imagined and woven to life from her pocket and tossed it to their outstretched hands, like one might toss breadcrumbs to a goose.

  Ava caught it first.

  “Oh, that is gorgeous,” she cooed. “This is like spun sugar and a maiden’s blush and cherry blossoms.”

  “It would make the prettiest ball gown,” Adeline added, reaching for it hungrily. “God what I would give to design with this.”

  “It’s so soft and delicate, too. It’d be a dream next to my skin.”

  “Or tea gown! Or underthings. Can you just imagine? Oh, I now want to commission an entirely new wardrobe with this pink silk.”

  They could indeed just imagine all sorts of garments made with this particularly gorgeous silk. The shade of pink was like flowers in spring, the inside of a conch shell, like a woman’s cheeks after a man whispered all the wicked and wonderful things he wanted to do with her.

  It was a universally flattering shade of pink, as one could see as each woman passed it around and held it up to her face and somehow it made everyone look younger and happier and healthier. Daisy Prescott was giving it particular consideration, likely using her scientific brain to distill the what and how and why of this particular shade. Probably so she could invent a shade of lip paint or rouge to match.

  “Anything made with this would be a delight,” Harriet said. “And I hate pink.”

  “No!” Beatrice cried, her cheeks a shade of this very pink, though perhaps with a shade more fury. “We cannot make anything with it!”

  “What’s the problem? It’s lovely.”

  “That is the problem. It is loveliness in fabric form. I want to remake my wardrobe and reupholster all the furniture in my house with it. I want to make flags to fly from every flagpole in the city with it. But it is exclusive to Dalton’s.”

  Oh. A sudden cold hush swept over the women. What dreadful news. Because if it was exclusive to Dalton’s that meant they could not buy it, not without jeopardizing the investment they’d all made in Goodwin’s, and their commitment to Beatrice’s store and the sisterhood. Not without making their fearless leader wear this public display of submission.

  “Oh, that is a problem,” Ava said. As she looked longingly at the swatch.

  In an effort to have their pink and wear it, too, one woman suggested a possible solution. “Perhaps you can go to the mill and negotiate your own purchase! Perhaps you could even get it for less than Dalton’s.”

  “Margaret and I first sent word from John Washington. And when even he couldn’t close the deal, I made the journey myself to the mill upstate only to learn that it is exclusively made for Dalton because he owns the factory.”

  “Oh, that’s very clever,” Harriet said. The rest of the women murmured their concern.

  “It is, isn’t it? Which makes it all the more enraging.”

  Beatrice flopped back on the settee. Someone handed her a fortifying cup of tea and someone else handed her an entire plate of pastries, bless her. This might just get her through the afternoon.

  She was at once exhilarated and exhausted from the day-to-day business of running the store. There was so much to manage! The ledgers and the orders and the rivalries between salesgirls and departments and establishing new displays. It was a far cry from all those days she swanned about the castle, trying to find something to do.

  And now this!

  She was about to be undone by pink silk.

  It would be the death of her business, her dreams, her.

  Beatrice had gotten used to success. And there was no denying she was a success—the store was busy, the sales were brisk, the chatter among women was favorable, the press was good. Success suited her and she was not ready to relinquish it. This was possibly how Dalton had felt, too, when she’d come to town and taken over the store.

  Elizabeth was longingly caressing the silk with a faraway look in her eyes, clearly imagining herself in gowns and corsets and parasols made of it, living her best life in this pink silk. Finding love, personal fulfillment, saving orphans, and being declared the best-dressed woman in all of New York, in this silk.

  Maybe Dalton did understand women and what they wanted after all.

  Didn’t that just make her feel . . . Oh, that made her feel all sorts of violently conflicting things. Mainly, though, it made her feel hot and bothered. Because he wanted to love her and make love to her and dress her in beautiful pink silks and she . . . couldn’t. The price was more than she was willing to pay.

  “No, Ava. Put down Dalton’s Wild Rose,” she said, sharing the name of the shade of pink.

  “Oh, it has a name!” Ava cried.

  “I know. I know.”

  “Could you do your own version? Perhaps even slightly cheaper?”

  “It’s possible. But it would be a second-best version and people will see that we are copying Dalton’s, which is to say that we are just following what the man does, which means that they will see we are second best,” Beatrice replied. “I’m not ready to be second best just yet. Though I suppose it’s bound to happen. This fabric will be a sensation, it will draw in all the customers who will buy other things while they’re already there, and they’ll have no reason to go across the street into Goodwin’s and we’ll be ruined. My apologies, ladies, I tried.”

  “No, we’re not ruined,” Adeline, the dressmaker, declared in no uncertain terms. The room fell silent. But it was the glimmer in her eye that had them on tenterhooks because Adeline clearly had an idea of what to do. “We’re not ruined. We will simply make it unfashionable.”

  And didn’t that inspire some curious expressions and refills of teacups.

  “Do go on.”

  “Adeline, I am intrigued.”

  “Does this mean we cannot wear it?”

  “We cannot wear it,” Adeline said firmly. “We won’t even want to wear it. No one will. If we do this correctly.”

  “Sad!”

  “But how do we make it unfashionable?”

  At this, Adeline’s eyes lit up. “This we are uniquely suited to do. And if we work together we can all pull it off. Ladies who write for the papers—Fanny, Nelly, Jane—you shall have to pick another color to champion. You will have to write disparaging things about pink. Harriet, Susan, perhaps you might give lectures on the frivolity of the color. And as for myself, I should of course refuse to make anything with it. Better yet, my dressmaking establishment is soon to be launched at Goodwin’s. And . . . we’ll have a fashion show.”

  “What is a fashion show?”

  “I have no idea. I just invented it. But it will be something that will display our rival color and fabric, something that all the newspapers will cover, something that women will clamor to witness and will tell their friends about.”

  Was this fluttering feeling . . . hope? Perhaps not all was lost after all. Perhaps this team of women might save everything. All they had to do was sacrifice the joy and pleasure of wearing the most delectable pink silk that had ever been invented.

  “But this means we will have to deprive ourselves of gorgeous pink gowns and everything pink.”

  “Yes,” Adeline said sadly. “None of us can wear it.”

  “It might not have worked with your complexion anyway.”

  “That’s going too far. It’s clearly universally flattering.”

  “I suppose but . . .”

  “We must make sacrifices for the sake of what we are building with Goodwin’s,” Harriet said. “Think of what is on the line here . . . All the jobs we have created for women.”

  “To say nothing of all the female entrepreneurs who tied their businesses to it,” Adeline said. Such as herself. She exchanged a glance with Daisy and Martha and Madame CJ Walker, who had all opened outposts of their popular cosmetics stores and salons within Goodwin’s.

  “All the women we have made feel good about themselves by offering them a safe space to be inspired by beautiful things,” Daisy said.

  “And the safe space we have created for women to develo
p dreams and friendships and purchase the things they need without hassle.”

  “Think of what a beacon we are to other women the world over,” Beatrice said, tripping slightly over the word beacon, but aware as always that this was never just about her. It was all of these women who were finding professional success and personal fulfillment because of what they’d built together.

  “All right, for all that, I will sacrifice the Wild Rose pink,” Ava said mournfully. “But I want front row seats at this fashion show, whatever it is.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Dalton’s Department Store

  One week later

  The tantalizing advertisements had appeared in all the New York City papers, so everybody who possibly cared about this sort of thing—people who liked stylish attire, not a small number—knew that Dalton’s was launching a newly invented, totally exclusive shade of silk called Wild Rose. In addition to the advertisements, brilliantly designed and executed with the assistance of a new firm established by Theodore Prescott the Third, there was dramatic advertising throughout his store so that the legions of Dalton’s shoppers would know there was something coming.

  A massive pink silk bow hung on the exterior, over the revolving door, a bright spot on the gray stone of Broadway. Inside huge swathes of it draped the walls and the ceiling, enveloping the store in a soft, delicate glow of pink. It was like being inside of a kiss, or something even a little more intimate.

  In other words, Dalton went all in.

  On pink silk.

  He had learned from the automobile debacle. Spectacle in and of itself was pointless if it appealed to the wrong clientele. Asserting the power of his engine, trying to impress with a hunk of metal was not what would bring women into the store, their hearts pounding and purses open. The truth was plain, in black and white and numbers in the store account ledgers: he was sunk without women.

  He had known this instinctively—harnessing their power was how he’d built his empire—but this rivalry with Beatrice had made him forget this inviolable truth.