Crude laughter bellows. “Does that mean Livingston gets discounts?”
Another says, “Is Rosebud pregnant?”
Rosa rubs her abdomen and gives a little pleasurable shake.
“Mrs. Melton is.” Livingston stands by his wife. “My countess, Lady Livingston, was run off by the ton for being common. She was a simple flower seller and part-time actress. That wasn’t good enough for many of you.” He captures her hand. “But you forget actress Lavinia Fenton, who married Charles Powlett and became his Duchess of Bolton. Then, the Countess of Derby had very humble beginnings. Is Mrs. Kirwan here? I’m told thewoman was once very friendly with one of our royal dukes.” He turns to Rosa. “Guess love doesn’t have boundaries.”
He kisses his countess’s cheek. “Let’s go home, Rosa. Mine, for a change.”
“Alexander, your mother, is she here?”
“No. She left earlier. But she’ll know all this tomorrow. The gossip will get to her. And you’re very rich, right? That will soften things with the dowager.”
“Oh, Alexander. You’re so presumptuous. And yes. Very.”
“Excuse me, you two.” With my cane, I point them to a table. “No one is leaving yet. There’s more entertainment.”
Red in the face, even his hands, Palmers comes to the center. “No one cares about a drunk and a brothel owner or an already disgraced marquess. I want to get back to the harlot Katherine Wilcox.”
He leans in and says, “Give me the company, and I’ll walk away now.”
She smiles brighter than I’ve seen in days. “I sold it. I have nothing for you. Say what you must. I’m tired of living in fear.”
He gawks at her, almost lunging, but I move between them with my cane. “What have you to accuse my wife?”
“Then you, Torrance, do the work for me. You admit that Katherine Wilcox married my son even though she was still married to you. That is bigamy. By the Bigamy Act of 1603, she’s guilty. Knowingly marrying one man while legally married to another is illegal.” He grins like a wolf in a hen house. “Tell them that it’s true, or that your daughter is ill—”
“It’s true.” Katherine’s voice echoes to the chandelier, to the rear column. “I was married to Jahleel Charles when I wed Tavis Palmers.” She points at the awful man. “But tell everyone the rest.”
“You’re guilty, Katherine.” Palmers makes his voice loud. “There’s nothing else. Just a jezebel who uses men, especially white men or half white.”
The glorious woman keeps telling her truth. “There is more.The Palmerses, Mary and Joseph, were friends of my father. They chaperoned me to St. Petersburg. When I told them I married, they said the Cossack vows were made up. I would never have married Tavis Palmers if not for your lies.”
Pride for her pumps in my veins. She told me what happened, but I shall finish it for her. “Mr. Palmers used your family’s years of friendship to take advantage of you. He planned to have you compromised far away from your home in London so that they could extort your family for your safe return. His son, Tavis, wouldn’t go along with it.”
“That never happened.” Palmers looks around. “She’s a bigamist, a liar.”
No one chants this taunt. Everyone is silent. If Palmers thought his words were enough to convict Katherine, he’s dead wrong.
“Mrs. Palmers,” I say, “come forward. You should stand in judgment, too.”
A small brunette runs to the drawing room doors.
“Steele, please.” My command makes my steward block her path.
“Mrs. Palmers,” I say in as gentle of a tone as possible. “You need to admit your part and find out why your son truly died.”
The brunette turns back and struts to her husband. “What don’t I know? Joseph, answer me.”
Palmers shakes his head. His smile crumbles. “It’s lies.”
“Palmers is the gambler. He’s the womanizer,” Katherine says. “Tavis would go find him and pull him out of brothels. He’d come back to Ground Street upset at all the low things his father did. He kept quiet to protect you, Mary.”
“That’s not true,” Palmers says. “That awful woman our son married destroyed him, and now she wants to sully me.”
I welcome the countess brothel owner back to the center of my drawing room. “Madame Rosebud, tell Mrs. Palmers the truth.”
“Tell her what, Your Grace, that Joseph Palmers was one of mybrothel’s biggest customers until his tab grew so large that I had to turn him out?” Rosa scrapes her finger at Palmers. “Or that, upon occasion, his poor son had to fetch him from my premises? Which one?”
