by Maya Rodale
“I don’t know,” she admitted and he left—taking the ring with him—and not for the first time did she sit down at her desk and cry.
Chapter Thirty-one
Goodwin’s Department Store
A few days later
Beatrice strolled through the sales floor of Goodwin’s, reveling in the chorus of women’s voices as they shopped and the strains of music played by an orchestra composed of entirely female musicians. Added to the mix was the clackety-clack of typewriters. There were dozens on display and customers were encouraged to try their hand at the machines and type whatever struck their fancy.
Beatrice loved looking at the notes. The paper sheets in the machines were full of lines and graphs about women’s lives, messages to friends, notes to lovers, missed connections. They were sought-after reading material in the reading room. On the fourth floor, there were evening classes teaching typing.
She paused and breathed it all in. This, this was what mattered. This was what she had sought to create. A space where women could live their fullest lives, dream big dreams, and make them come true. It had certainly been such a space for Beatrice. Because of Goodwin’s, she had everything she had ever craved: purpose and independence.
She had her freedom, too, but that had cost her. She wasn’t thinking about what it took to escape the duke, but how it had hurt to refuse Dalton. She didn’t regret it, but she certainly felt a sharp pang of something like loneliness, even in the middle of Goodwin’s on a busy day.
There must have been thousands of people around her in the store but still she felt lonely.
Beatrice refused to dwell on it; instead she continued her tour through the store.
On the mezzanine of the grand central staircase, the Ladies of Liberty had established a table where they were soliciting signatures on a petition demanding women’s right to vote. Women paused in the midst of their shopping to hear impassioned speeches about the rights they ought to have, as law-abiding and tax-paying citizens.
Something to think about between trying on gloves and underthings and purchasing packets of buttons and the new style of hat.
“How many names have you gotten so far today?” Beatrice asked.
“Hundreds at least,” Harriet answered.
“And it’s only one o’clock. We haven’t even had the afternoon rush yet.”
She ought to take a break from making her rounds of the store, but with Detective Hyde home sick—she’d worked herself into a fever—she didn’t want to risk missing anything. Just in case. Hyde’s warnings and Dalton’s storming around, shouting about her safety had rattled her.
She couldn’t let anything bad happen to this store.
Beatrice had once felt so powerless and disconnected. But now she had this marvelous space, where she could be the brightest version of herself. She had friends in the Ladies of Liberty who encouraged and supported her.
Now that she no longer had her nights with Dalton, this space was all she had.
This loud, boisterous, beautiful shop.
Amidst all the sounds of the store it was difficult to hear the first screams. It was hard to discern them among the swell of the string section in the orchestra, the cries for “Votes for women!” from the suffragists or the sound of hundreds of women asking a friend, “Should I get this dress, this corset, these gloves?”
The cries quickly increased in volume until there was no mistaking them.
“Fire!”
“Fire?” Beatrice looked questioningly at Harriet, who appeared concerned but unruffled.
It was only when Margaret bustled over, struggling to maintain a calm outward appearance, that Beatrice felt a cold knot in the pit of her stomach.
“I don’t want to alarm you,” she began but Beatrice was already alarmed. “There’s a fire in the basement. I’ve rung for the fire department and they are on their way, but we should evacuate everyone just to be safe.”
“Fire?”
“Fire.”
Instead of the fragrance of fresh flowers, Beatrice breathed in the faint fragrance of smoke. Among the chatter, she started to hear the snap and crackle of a roaring fire. If she could hear it here, on the mezzanine, then it was not just a fire in the basement. She could hear the dull roar of it, smell its presence, and there was no denying it was roaring up hard and fast.
All around the store, one could see women pausing, wondering. Do I smell smoke? Is there a fire?
Yes and yes and they all started moving toward the doors en masse. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Clinging to friends and children and recently bought packages. Hundreds of them, thousands of them, spread across six floors, all vying for the same exit on the ground floor.
“Margaret, open the doors. Break the windows. Do whatever is necessary to get everyone outside.”
Beatrice turned to go upstairs, and it was slow going against the direction of the crowd.
“What are you doing?”
“To calmly request our customers leave. Immediately.”
Beatrice decided she would start at the top floor and make the rounds, and with the manner of a society matron hosting afternoon tea, graciously ask her customers to leave. Even though her heart felt lodged in her throat and she felt like she would be sick, right here near the display of bicycles she had fought so hard for.
But she was a debutante and a duchess and so she knew how to move through a crowd, radiating peace and loveliness no matter what she felt inside.
Please proceed calmly to the exit.
Please do take the stairs.
Please move with haste, but no need to worry!
But flames and smoke and screams of alarm outpaced her. She could hear the roar of the fire, coming up from the depths, she could hear the stampede of women and their shouts of alarm. She glanced down and saw the flames working their way through the millinery section, onward to ladies attire on the third floor.
She heard screams.
And she knew, oh God she knew, that this was the end of Goodwin’s.
Everyone had to go—now. The fire was taking over.
Beatrice picked up her skirts and started to rush through each department, urging everyone to leave immediately. She tore through the ladies reading room, she interrupted the luncheon service, she alerted the staff in accounting. She was in the home furnishings department when she started to cough from the smoke and feel the heat on her skin.
Every fiber in her being screamed for her to leave. Her lungs wanted fresh air, her heart wanted to slow down, her brain told her to save herself.
She heard children crying.
The nursery! She had to get help evacuating the nursery!
The attendants were already lining up the children and carrying the babies. Beatrice ran to enlist shopgirls from other departments to assist their orderly evacuation and to console crying children and hysterical mothers rushing against the crowds and past the flames up to their darlings.
They made their way down the grand staircase. Step by step, with armfuls of wriggling toddlers, children clinging desperately to necks and skirts.
Beatrice couldn’t stop now, but she lifted her eyes for just a second to take one last look.
Flames licked up the central pillars. Flames recklessly devoured all the merchandise—gowns and gloves and tea sets and place settings. Double beds, twin beds. None of it mattered, they burned all the same.
She watched the fire devour the place where she and Dalton had first locked eyes. The spot behind the pillar where they had first kissed. The fitting room where he’d brought her secret fantasy to life. All the places where passion got the better of them and love had blossomed.
All the moments of her life, gone.
The monument of her ambition, gone.
Her gift to fellow womankind, gone.
As long as these women got out—with their brains and hearts and tireless hours of service to families—as long as they survived, no real damage done.
She rushed past millions of dollar
s of merchandise going up in flame. No matter.
This building, now crumbling around her, was her home. Her history. Her memories. Goodbye to all that.
She would find out who did this. Who stole her dream from her, who wrecked this safe space, who stole this temple of joy and pleasure from women. She swore revenge.
If she lived.
She’d almost reached the doorway, almost reached safety when the child whose hand she’d been holding panicked and broke free and got separated. In the smoke and flames, Beatrice struggled to see her. Though her lungs screamed for her to go outside, Beatrice turned back to find that young girl and save her.
Dalton’s Department Store
“Good morning, Mr. Dalton,” the shopgirl chirped at him as he walked past. He continued his stroll through the store with only the briefest nod of his head in acknowledgment.
He didn’t have it in him to wink or say more.
All he could see was pink silk. Loads of the stuff. He never wanted to see it again, yet his warehouse and account books were groaning under the weight of all the excess of it. It was the color of failure and rejection. It reminded him of the flush stealing across Beatrice’s skin as he made love to her, which reminded him that he would never behold such a sight again, which made him considering driving that automobile off the roof.
He turned to the nearest shopgirl.
“We need to get rid of this,” he said. “All of it.”
“Yes, Mr. Dalton. We’ll mark it on sale.”
“A public display of failure. Excellent.”
The poor woman didn’t know what to say to that other than, “Yes, Mr. Dalton.”
For the first time in his life, Dalton didn’t want to be on the sales floor in the midst of it all. Dalton could not find refuge in his office, either—the windows overlooked Broadway and Goodwin’s and the windows to her office.
He could not even go home, the emptiness there always such a stark contrast to the voices rising to the rafters here. Home now held memories of her that he couldn’t stand to remember.
He would have to sell it. Immediately.
Dalton had some idea of going downtown to Mrs. Claflin’s Orchard Street Settlement House. It was a good excuse to get out of the store. Surely, there were no memories of Beatrice there. He felt like a cad for continually putting off Mrs. Claflin’s invitation, and he had a notion that getting out of his own head would do him some good.
Some people had real problems. He just had a broken heart.
And maybe lost the will to live.
But otherwise, he was fine.
But that was before panicked murmurs rippled through the crowds in his store. That was before the doors burst open and a deluge of smoke-smudged women came crashing in, with alternating cries of “Fire!” and “Water!”
Dalton rushed toward them, ready to help. But out of nowhere, Connor grabbed his arm, his expression grave.
“There’s a fire. At Goodwin’s.”
“I have to go to her.”
“Go,” Connor urged, eyes dark. “I’ll take care of things here.”
Dalton rushed through the revolving doors and skidded to a halt on Broadway when he saw the inferno raging. Flames were licking out of the windows. Swarms of women gathered on the sidewalk, spilling into Broadway, blocking traffic. The fire department was there, doing their best. But Dalton knew a hopeless case when he saw one.
There was only one question: Where was Beatrice?
He scanned the crowds and didn’t see her among the women who clutched each other, who stood in small groups speaking in hushed tones, women who wept into handkerchiefs.
He pushed through the crush, calling her name. “Beatrice!”
He asked everyone, anyone, “Have you seen her?”
He saw them step back at the wild, panicked look in his eyes. Dalton faintly registered that he must seem like a madman.
But where was Beatrice?
What he felt was panic and terror because he knew her, and so he knew that she would be the last one out of the shop.
If she left at all.
Firefighters were doing the best they could to contain the raging inferno. Their buckets and hoses were woefully inefficient. Police officers did their best to hold back the crowds.
Important work, that.
But he was the only one who knew to look for her. And the only one mad enough to run in after her.
“Sir!”
“Stop!”
Dalton pushed past the crying women, past the sweaty firefighters, past the officers in uniform. He ran toward the flames, toward the building as it started to crumble from within.
It was idiotic.
A stupid display of heroics.
But the world needed Beatrice. The world needed her, so vibrant and determined to live her best life and help other women do the same.
It was one thing to live alone in his mansion without her, lonely as all hell. He could do that. He had done that. He didn’t want to but if that was his fate, then so be it.
But he had always been able to go through his days and nights knowing that she was out there, somewhere, dreaming under the same night sky, breathing the same air, feeling the same sunshine on her cheeks.
If he really loved her, he would be happy just knowing she was alive and living her best life, even if it meant she was living without him.
And if he loved her, really loved her, he wouldn’t just stand by in her hour of need.
Dalton pushed past the officers and firefighters and their shouts to stop. He ran into the burning building, knowing full well that he might not come out alive.
If he died saving Beatrice, it would be the best thing he’d ever done.
Once inside, the smoke started to choke him immediately. The heat was unbearable. He pushed through, shouting her name. “Beatrice!” over and over until finally he heard her say, “Here I am!”
They were stuck behind some display counters, surrounded by flames and molten glass.
She looked so small, huddled on the ground near one of the marble pillars, trying to coax a small, terrified girl to leave. Dalton scooped up the child and turned to run to safety. Behind him Beatrice cried out and fell—she had twisted her ankle.
“Go!” she shouted. Fumes and flames were surrounding her. She wouldn’t be able to crawl out fast enough and he could not carry them both at once. “Go!” she shouted again.
Dalton rushed toward the street and safely delivered the child into the arms of a police officer.
Then he turned and went back in for Beatrice.
Chapter Thirty-two
The Goodwin Residence
One West Thirty-Fourth Street
The next day
If Beatrice was in no condition to travel downtown to Harriet’s drawing room, then by God, Harriet’s drawing room would come to her. In other words, the Ladies of Liberty came to call upon her at home, where she was stuck languishing in the drawing room.
Not only was she in a slightly injured state—a swollen ankle, some burns, a cough—but there was no place else to go.
Goodwin’s store was good and gone, burned to ashes and rubble.
It was gone on purpose.
Thanks to Detective Hyde’s diligent sleuthing—in disguise as a cleaning woman, whom no one ever really took notice of—and the police department’s own subsequent investigations, the arsonist was swiftly apprehended.
“It is said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But I reckon that hell hath no fury like a man with an ego wounded by a woman or a man who fears losing to a woman,” Harriet said drily.
It had been none other than Sam Connor, Dalton’s right-hand man, who had started the fire and who had been behind all the acts of vandalism. Beatrice had suspected Mr. Stevens or her own brother to be behind it. But Dalton’s right-hand man?
She wished she were more surprised.
What really burned—and she did not use the word lightly—was that all her ambition and accomplishments had been un
done by some man with a chip on his shoulder, who only saw what he stood to lose and who didn’t think that the world was big enough for both Dalton’s and Goodwin’s.
Beatrice was shaken to her core. In pursuing her dreams, she had stoked the anger of men, unleashed their fury, and provided a brilliant, beautiful, feminine target for them to make their point. She had dragged her friends into the spotlight with her, making them targets, as well. She felt wretched.
“The police have him in custody. The evidence of his guilt is damning and I expect that he won’t see the light of day outside a prison wall for a long, long time,” said Arabella, who was one of the first female lawyers in the city. Her words provided some relief.
But what the Ladies of Liberty knew but dare not say: such men were like roaches. One might lock up one, but a million remained crawling through the city, disturbing one’s equilibrium and ruining their days.
“Good riddance.”
“Detective Hyde is livid that after all her undercover investigative work she was home sick with a fever on the day they struck,” Beatrice said. “She is beside herself with guilt thinking she could have prevented it. I, as well.”
“A woman’s work is never done. She may never rest,” Adeline said with a sigh.
“Connor was determined. If only he’d applied himself to a more useful pursuit, other than revenge,” Harriet sniffed. “Like perhaps minding his own store’s business.”
“It is said that he thought Dalton wasn’t doing enough to compete with Goodwin’s.”
“Was Dalton behind it?”
“I don’t think so,” Beatrice said. “I can’t believe he would be.”