Page 29 of The Laudanum Ladies' Society

‘I’ll think about it.’ Gwen closed her eyes. She was starting to feel quite ill from the rocking of the cab, and more than anything, she wanted a cup of tea. Neither of them spoke again until the coach stopped outside the pharmacy.

‘We’ll meet soon to discuss Miss Salisbury’s proposal,’ Jenny said, kissing Gwen’s cheek. Gwen was fairly certain that Jenny’s answer would be yes, and if that was the case, she’d be hard pressed to disagree.

Archibald was sitting hunched in front of the fire when Gwen entered the sitting room. He held a magnifying glass up to his eyes and was reading a newspaper, apparently so deep in thought that he barely noticed Gwen was in the room until she took off her hat and coat.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked, without looking up. ‘It’s getting late and I’m getting hungry. The fire has started to go out.’

‘I told you before I left, I was going visiting with Miss Rosewood,’ Gwen said, as she put fresh coal on the fire and stoked the embers.

Jenny,she thought to herself, smiling at the new intimacy.

‘We went to visit an acquaintance of hers called Miss Salisbury. She is a minor member of the gentry, or some-such. She runs a number of charitable foundations.’

Archibald scowled. ‘As if you need to become involved in anything like that. You do not have the time.’

‘I shall make time,’ Gwen said, feeling a flicker of rebellion that she was not entirely certain was caused by the dose she had taken. ‘I think I am entitled to a bit of enjoyment every now and again.’

‘If you can call spending time with that old maid, Miss Rosewood, enjoyable,’ Archibald grumbled.

‘Archibald! What an unkind thing to say about Miss Rosewood,’ Gwen chided.

‘Don’t judge me on what I say!’ Archibald said with a glare.

‘Well, I feel sorry for her,’ Gwen lied. ‘Poor motherless girl.’

‘Girl, ha!’ Archibald snapped. ‘She’s thirty, and is therefore an old maid. Should have been married long ago and out of Conrad’s hair.’

Ordinarily, Gwen would concede, but tonight she felt a streak of rebelliousness.

‘Oh, I think it quite suits Conrad to have her there,’ she snapped.

Archibald set down his magnifying glass with a clatter. ‘I doubt you know whatMr Rosewoodthinks, Mrs Walters. You forget yourself, speaking in such a manner.’

Gwen took a step back, astonished by the severity of his tone and the admonishment.

‘If you will excuse me, Mr Walters,’ she said archly, ‘I shall go and start making dinner.’

Without waiting for an answer, she swept out of the room and down into the kitchen. Even though she was tired from the dose she had taken, she bustled around, spurred on by her irritation. She secreted the money with the rest in the shell box, but suddenly the thought of spending it on Archibald’s surgery was less appealing. How dare he speak to her in such a manner!

Out in the yard, the sound of the baker’s four children and their dog laughing, filled her ears. She walked over and flung a couple of crusts out.

‘Here you go, Patch,’ she called.

The children bubbled up with excitement as the terrier pounced on the bread. Gwen shut the door thoughtfully. Her house had never had such easy laughter and her stomach felt hollow with a sense of loss that she had not known before. For the first time in her life, she boiled with both indignation and a sense of uncontained freedom yearning to burst out.

Miss Salisbury did not care what the world thought of her, that much was clear. Jenny was trying to forge her own path despite her uncle. Gwen was determined that she would follow their lead. She wasn’t yet sure how this would manifest itself, but the tincture would have something to do with it. And whoever this Augusta Charles turned out to be, Gwen was now firmly decided she would grasp the opportunities that came her way.

Chapter Ten

‘Uncle Conrad, I would like to talk to you about my inheritance.’

Jenny placed the tray containing the coffee pot and cream jug on the table at her uncle’s side then sat in the vacant chair across from him. They had finished dinner and retired to the parlour where the fire was warm and the chairs were comfortable. In the week since she’d returned from Miriam’s home, she’d put off broaching the subject. But now that Uncle Conrad was well fed and warm, she judged it would be as good a time as any.

She had apparently judged wrong because Conrad gave her an icy look. ‘Your inheritance? Leaving aside the fact that you wouldn’t have the first notion of how to run a business, it’s rather presumptuous of you to assume that I will be leaving my empire to you when I have supported you all this time.’

‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ Jenny answered. Her immediate annoyance at his condescending judgement of her aptitude was only slightly mitigated by his pomposity in calling a handful of pharmacies an ‘empire’. Although, now he mentionedit, she wasn’t sure who else he would be leaving it to, because there were no other relatives that she knew of.

‘I was thinking of the inheritance my parents left to me,’ she clarified. ‘I know it was a small sum, but it doesn’t seem that it makes much of a return.’