The Laudanum Ladies’ Society

Chapter 1

Chapter One

It was a longstanding tradition that, after dinner, Jenny Rosewood ensured that her Uncle Conrad was comfortable by the fire with his nightly sleeping tincture to hand.

It was also customary that on Thursday night she added two extra measures to the water glass without his knowledge before he entered the sitting room.

She’d long since made peace with her conscience for drugging him.

Thursday was the servants’ night off and when Jenny visited her old school friend, and Uncle Conrad had the house in peace with his paints to concentrate on his magnum opus.

He had an ambition to publish a book of his paintings of the natural world.

Tonight, his subject was a selection of dried seaweed, some crystals and a dead crab.

‘Don’t forget I need my sleeping tincture,’ Conrad said slightly grumpily as he peered over the top of his spectacles.

‘I haven’t forgotten it,’ Jenny said calmly. ‘I’ll fetch it straight away.’

She uncorked the glass bottle and measured the dose into the water glass that the housemaid had previously left on the side table.

It was a new bottle that she had collected from the pharmacy that morning and would last at least a month.

She continued chatting to him while he drank, whilst running her eye over the room.

He would begin to feel sleepy within the next hour and take himself to bed.

The fire was built up and burning hot enough to take the edge off the November frost, and the fireguard was in place. There was nothing within reach that Uncle Conrad could knock over or injure himself on if he was to lapse into sleep before he made it upstairs.

She patted his shoulder. ‘If you will excuse me, I shall go and get ready to visit Miss Beadsley.’

‘I wish your friend would venture out and visit you on occasion,’ Uncle Conrad grumbled. ‘It’s most unfair of her to expect you to call, especially on these damp nights.’

Jenny bent to kiss his cheek, hiding her slightly guilty expression.

‘I don’t mind making the journey. She’s an invalid, so she can’t really leave her house.’

She kissed his cheek again then hurried upstairs to prepare for her adventure.

The extra dose did Conrad no harm. It merely ensured that his tiredness came sooner and his slumber was slightly deeper, so that he did not notice Jenny returning to the house later than she said. And especially in what manner.

‘Miss Beadsley’ was merely a fiction created to explain Jenny’s absence from the house and she had no intention of her true destination being discovered.

Anyone sitting in the small garden square opposite the Rosewoods’ house would, shortly after seven o’clock, have seen the door opening and a slim young man, in a well-worn but neat overcoat and bowler hat, leaving quietly.

He glanced in both directions, the moonlight glinting off a pair of round spectacles, then turned left and walked quickly until he reached the corner and turned onto the larger road.

It was only when Jenny was a few streets away from home that she felt at ease enough to slow down and meet the eyes of other walkers.

Leaving the house dressed in male clothing was always risky.

If she appeared too furtive as she stepped out onto the street, she would draw attention to herself as perhaps a potential burglar casing out the properties.

But if she did not leave the square quickly, she might be seen by a neighbour who knew that the only men on the premises were old Mr Rosewood and his valet, Evans.

Once she was safely away, she could relax and become Jeremy, a young man with a keen interest in natural science and the arts.

For the past four years, she had been going to public lectures, the theatre and on occasion, the music hall, anonymously.

She was tall and plain enough to make a convincing young man.

The pair of spectacles, along with a wig she had procured from a theatrical supplier, added to the illusion.

Her destination tonight was a lecture theatre in Finsbury, which for the past month had been advertising a symposium with examples of taxidermy from South America, along with a description of travels through Brazil and Peru.

She strode out to catch the horse bus for the two-mile journey, whistling a tuneful air in a pleasant tenor voice as she walked, nodding to the few other pedestrians that she met and enjoying the swagger in her step that she had developed to convince onlookers that she was a young man.

Why women weren’t permitted to wear trousers was a matter that frustrated her whenever she changed back into her petticoats and skirts.

She delighted in the freedom they gave: the increased speed at which one could walk and the ability to manoeuvre around obstacles, changing direction like a skiff rather than a sailboat.

On arrival, she paid the shilling and sixpence for admission to the standing gallery.

The view was less than ideal, though in the darker upper gallery she was less likely to be noticed.

Looking out, she spotted a handful of women in the audience, though they were few and far between and every one of them was accompanied by a male chaperone.

A little flurry of envy wiggled in Jenny’s belly as she watched the couples converse animatedly.

Through necessity she had to attend these events alone.

If she’d managed to find a husband who would have allowed – even encouraged her – to attend lectures, she might have been tempted to marry, even if the inevitable wifely duties and resultant ties of motherhood followed.

The past forked down roads where her life might have been different.

If her parents hadn’t died and she had stayed living in York…

If she’d been able to remain at school long enough to meet a companion with whom she might have shared a home (and an understanding)…

If she’d been able to meet potential friends of her own age and ideals, rather than tending house for Uncle Conrad…

An expectant lull settled over the room.

Jenny banished the maudlin game of What If and gave all her attention to the impressively whiskered gentleman who had walked onto the stage, and before too long her mood was captured by the fascinating insight into the breeding habits of Xenarthra.

Captivated by the vivid descriptions of mangroves and mountains, rainforests and the River, the evening passed delightfully.

Jenny left the lecture hall in an excellent mood, though it would have been nice to have someone with whom she could share her thoughts on the subject.

She looked at her pocket watch. It had belonged to her father, and when he died, she had taken it as a personal memento.

He’d been liberally minded and spoke to her about topics that many fathers would not have discussed with a daughter.

Even after the birth of Jeremy, the briefly-lived brother whose name she had claimed, he had continued to read her stories of knights and dragons, Gorgons and Vikings.

Jenny bristled in the cold, foggy night – her father would not have liked to see her spending her whole life as a housekeeper for Conrad.

Shaking herself from her reverie, Jenny considered the time.

It wasn’t too late. She could catch the horse-bus back now, or stroll around the perimeter of the newly created Finsbury Park to the high street and catch it from there.

She wouldn’t risk crossing the park alone, even dressed as a man, but the neighbourhood was alive with working men leaving or entering the two pubs.

She caught a whiff of hot meat from the pie and mash shop and her stomach growled, but despite her disguise, it was too much of a risk to go in and ask for a table.

She put the watch away and stepped forward, almost colliding with a woman – two women, to be precise – as they had been striding arm in arm along the pavement, giggling.

‘Mind yourself!’ exclaimed the shortest, who scowled as she tossed her blonde ringlets back and carried on.

Her taller companion stopped beside Jenny.

She was muffled in a large shawl and a hat with a puff of net over the small brim.

She was very pretty, with an angular face and black hair curled in large loops about her ears.

‘Are you all right, sir?’

Jenny’s hand went instinctively to her pocket. The watch was still there.

The woman spotted the gesture and her eyes filled with amusement.

‘We’re not a pair of Fagins. We simply didn’t see you.’

‘I didn’t think that,’ Jenny lied.

‘Of course you didn’t.’

The woman grinned, then she looked at Jenny and a puzzled expression crossed her face. Jenny’s chest tightened with horror. She couldn’t tell, could she? The woman looked as if she was about to speak, when her friend hailed her impatiently from up ahead.

‘Come on, Mim!’

‘Good evening, sir.’ Mim smiled at Jenny once more and picked up her skirts to join her companion.

Jenny’s shoulders sagged with relief but all the same a stab of longing pierced her heart as she watched the two women clasp each other around the waist and walk off laughing.

She suppressed a sigh of frustrated desire and jealousy.

If only there had really been a Miss Beadsley.

But it wasn’t to be, and if she ever gave as much as a hint to Uncle Conrad or her acquaintances that her inclinations were that way, she would likely be thrown out of the house or imprisoned in her bedroom forever.

She dug her hands deep into her pockets, put her head down and strode on towards the horse-bus stop.

Jenny’s street was silent when she returned. The gas streetlamp illuminated the small, enclosed garden square, but the Rosewood house was in darkness and Jenny returned with less furtiveness than she left.