Chapter 46 Jahleel—Did We Win Yet?
JAHLEEL—DID WE WIN YET?
The violinists start to play Beethoven’s Ecossaise in G Major, which is of their own volition. The tune is spirited and fast, but no dancers move in the drawing room.
Yet someone starts clapping, clapping and shouting, “Whorish women are taking over!”
The music silences again.
I sheath my cane to lean on it and turn to the Palmerses. It’s time for his battle.
“Enough.” A woman waving a fan wearing a revealing poppy-colored gown comes to the center. “All of you are hypocrites. You’re willing to say these things on a day to celebrate a child’s birthday.”
“The spawn is gone,” Palmers says. “This is about a grown woman, a deceiver, a liar.”
“Your Grace, do we show him out?” Mr. Steele is again at the door.
“Nyet.” I take the young woman’s hand and kiss it. “Madame … Rose … Rosa Saxton. I’m glad you came. Do you have something to address to Mr. Palmers, or anyone else in the crowd?”
Katherine comes to my left. “What’s going on?”
“We are letting Madame … we are letting Rosa Saxton have a moment to express herself.”
“Jahleel,” she whispers. “You almost killed a man for me.”
“The night is young. The tally may improve.”
“I’m a businesswoman,” Rosa says. “My establishment caters to many of you. Perhaps you’ve heard of Madame Rosebud’s.”
An older woman, probably a dowager peer, tuts loudly like she’s in pain. More scowls than before appear—more for Madame Rosebud than for ill-mannered Prahmn.
Rosa waves and blows kisses to a few gentlemen in the crowd, setting off cheers and husbands getting whacked with fans.
I see now where these fans are dangerous.
“It’s quite wrong,” Rosa continues, “to keep punishing people for not being born of peers or to taunt them for doing what they must to survive. My husband’s mother …”
The Earl of Livingston comes from the back of the emptying room. “Your husband, Alexander Melton, is right here. Rosa Melton, my wife.”
Gasps.
A goblet falls and plinks on the floor.
One matronly voice says, “I thought they divorced in Scotland?”
Lord Mark gasps. “Didn’t you say you were never going to marry again?”
Carew accompanies him. “So you pretended to be a drunk and to go to a brothel every night because your wife owns it?”
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 the woman 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 my brothel’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?”
I kiss her hand and send her off to Livingston. “My lady, I think your testimony is just fine.”
Rosa giggles. Livingston, too. The man looks like a weight has been removed from his back.
But it’s time for all of this to be done.
“Mrs. Palmers”—I look at Katherine while I say this part—“Tavis loved her. Katherine somewhat cared for him … well, loved him, and she used her money to try and help Tavis save his father. When Wilcox Coal became so indebted that its coffers ran empty, Palmers got Tavis to take insane bets.” I turn back to the poor excuse for a father.
“You got your son killed. And yet you stand here trying to abuse Katherine and the Wilcoxes. Good people who’ve only tried to help you. ”
“You worm.” Mrs. Palmers goes to her husband and slaps him. “Our son would do anything for you. You used him. Now you tried to use the Wilcoxes again. Why?”
“They don’t deserve anything they have. I encouraged Cesar to deliver coal. I gave him the hat he used and told him to dress up to impress customers. He followed all my instructions but never gave me a dime.”
“You didn’t work for anything.” Katherine’s tone sounds bold and loud.
The righteous anger in her that in the past has spewed upon me rains down.
Finger pointing, she steps toward the couple.
“You’ve never gotten up before dawn to load a dray.
You never made sure everyone had what they needed to heat their homes in the winter or worked past sunset.
You never did any of the backbreaking labor.
My father did and still found the strength to sit by my mother’s sickbed from sunset to midnight to dawn. ”
She swallows and glances at the returning Scarlett and Georgina. “Our mother sewed all the uniforms, made the schedules, and raised three proud girls while battling a debilitating illness. Patsy and Cesar Wilcox made Wilcox Coal great, not you, you sniveling entitled fool.”
I want to give Katherine my cane, but I need it to stand beside her.
“You owe me.” Palmers hits his chest. “Katherine, it was my idea. You were old enough. You heard.”
“My father humored you. He already had his ideas. My mother sewed uniforms long before you ever suggested anything.” Katherine gets close enough to punch him. “Tavis deserved a better father. And my father deserved a true friend, not a jealous, reckless man.”
“I’ll see you in court, Katherine Wilcox.” Palmers sneers and tries to grab his wife’s hand.
I wave to my barrister and snap for Steele’s servers.
“Joseph Palmers, you’re insolvent. I’ve consolidated all of your debts.
Since you haven’t made any effort to pay me and refused my last offer, I ask an officer of the court to take you now into custody.
You’ll remain in debtors’ prison until you can repay me. ”
Lord Ashbrook and a bailiff step forward. “The Duke of Torrance applied for and was granted a writ of capias ad satisfaciendum. He stated he’d give you one last chance to settle tonight.”
“He crumpled the paper right in front of me.” I sigh and make a big show of it.
“Lady Lydia was playing hide-and-seek under the desk. She heard everything and was shocked an old man could be so stupid. He had a chance to reduce the debts Tavis encumbered upon Wilcox Coal on his behalf and the new debts Palmers created since Tavis died.”
“I didn’t understand.” Palmers tries to resist the bailiff. “I’ll take the deal now.”
“No deal. And you don’t have thirty thousand pounds. My daughter is right. You are stupid and predictable. And you’ve tried to ruin my party. To prison.” I offer him a dismissive wave. “Do svidaniya.”
Palmers tries to escape, but the runners, the deputized servers, apprehend him and lift him into the air like the bread platter.
Mrs. Palmers shakes her head while her husband screams for her to get a solicitor. “With what, Joseph? There’s no Tavis to save you.”
The bailiff orders the servers, “Shackle him into the prisoner cart outside. We’ll take him to the magistrate, and he’ll be remanded to Marshalsea Prison.”
“Rats. Overcrowding. No.” Sweating, chest drumming, Palmers tries to kick, but they carry him away, screaming, “I don’t deserve this!”
My fingers latch to Katherine’s hand, and together we turn away from the pitiful sight to my barrister. “Lord Ashbrook,” I say, “thank you.”
Katherine takes a full breath. “Thank you. This is over.”
Lord Mark strikes up the musicians. Some begin to dance.
“Trouble can still be made,” Ashbrook says, “but from what I heard, what everyone witnessed, Palmers damned himself, not you, Your Graces.”
Katherine’s mouth opens, but she says nothing.
I shake his hand. “My barrister’s maneuverings and pleadings at the King’s Bench and Court of Chancery have been instrumental.”
“If necessary,” Ashbrook says, “a good word from your husband will resolve anything.” He dips his head to Katherine and then to me. “I’ll be in touch, Your Graces. Good night.”
He leaves.
Carew brings his hands together. “That was something.” He takes his laughing aunt, Telma Smith, to dance to a new rendition of the interrupted Sir Roger de Coverley. The violins and oboes add to the spirited harmony.
Some guests stay.
Others leave.
I don’t care about anything. I become lost in how Katherine smiles, full and bright and at peace with the world and me.
For the first time since the Winter Palace ball, her hands lovingly wrap around my neck, and we publicly hold each other.
She waltzes in my arms and beams, happy to be with me.
Finally, I get to enjoy the last dance with my wife.