Chapter 1
Alice Wilton hurried home from her shift at The Clifton on Ladypool Road. The lock in had finished a little shy of 10:30pm but the clean-up had taken more than hour and so she wasn't going to reach home until just before midnight. She had been on her feet for nearly 14 hours but instead of being exhausted she was excited. Tommy was coming that night, as he had every Saturday for the last ten months, and she couldn't wait to see him.
He was a coiled spring of a man, ever ready to explode in to action. Tall, lean, and hard, he was capable of both extreme violence and deep sentimentality. By unspoken agreement they talked little about the violence of his life with the Blinders. It had no place in her neat little house or in the sanctuary they created in the comfort of her bed but she had heard enough stories about it. Christ, who hadn't! The thought of it sickened her but they could not shut out the world entirely. He needed the release that could only come from sharing his problems and gradually he told her little snippets about the legal side of his family business: the arguments between two bar maids in one of the pubs; problems with suppliers; his dreams for the future. Her comments and questions were short and to the point and he came to appreciate her lively intelligence. Eventually he began to use her as a sounding board for the less legitimate areas of his work and they enjoyed reasoning through solutions together. It frightened her a little that she was coming to see less and less difference between the two competing strands of his business. At other, darker times he talked of his losses. Of Grace's tragic death and the shock of his son's kidnapping. She knew he would not stand for his loved ones being used against him again and resolved to protect him from that eventuality to her last breath.
The decision might soon be taken out of her hands though. As she let herself in through her front door she allowed herself a brief moment of disquiet. The news she had to tell him was unlikely to be much cause for surprise. Their couplings between the sheets in her bed upstairs or on the rag rug before the fire in the parlour were frequent and intense; a source of deep joy to them both. That a pregnancy should result was hardly a shock. What would come next would be more of a test. She didn't pray often but she did now. 'Please god let him want the child. Please god let it be alright.' She couldn't bear to lose another child nor have Tommy turn away from her.
She moved briskly around her little back to back, drawing up the fire into a hearty blaze, lighting oil lamps, and taking a well wrapped brick from the fireplace to her bed upstairs to warm the sheets. She both loved and hated that bed. It had been a wedding present from her husband, Fred. 'Only fitting for a new bride to begin her married life in a new bed,' he had said to much ribald teasing from their friends and relations. Of course the bed was not actually new, being far too expensive for his small wage, but it was new to them and the ticking mattress had come directly from Dennetts. That bed had seen a lot of laughter in the first year of their marriage and a lot of tears later on. Both of them had been virgins when they wed and learning the pleasures of each other's bodies had been a constant delight. After a year she had fallen pregnant and they looked forward to the birth with excitement and a certain amount of trepidation.
All was well at first. Then she was brought to bed early. A terrible labour producing only a stillborn child had left her at the point of death. When she came back into herself Fred had become another man entirely. Terrified of losing her he refused to touch her again and their relationship had become as cold and barren as their marriage bed. They might have found a way back to each other but war had been declared and he'd signed up right away, joining the British Expeditionary Force in France. Within six weeks he was dead, killed by a shell during the great Allied victory at Marne. Shaken by the depth of her grief and fearing that she had driven him to his death she had taken to her bed for a month, tended by kind her hearted neighbours.
In October 1914 she had risen, put on her best dress, and gone directly to volunteer her services as a nurse, the job she had trained for before her short-lived marriage. Within months she was in France and later Belgium. The suffering she had seen there had put her own losses into perspective and it gave her some insight into the mind of the enigma that was Tommy Shelby.
The soft click of the latch below startled her from her reverie. He was finally here! Clamping down on her nerves she hurtled downstairs to meet him. In his arms he held a package. He seldom turned up empty handed. It was usually a small trifle, chocolates, a bottle of spirits, sometimes a magazine; certainly nothing that she would find hard to explain away to her inquisitive neighbours but she loved them nevertheless. They kept him close between visits. On one occasion he had brought her a pendant with a gaudy red stone. He had tried to convince her that it was nothing more than brass and paste but she recognised quality when she saw it and had refused to accept it. Obediently he took it away with him when he left and the following week he had returned laughing with two old pop eyed china dogs for the mantel instead. This time he grinned at her and held the package aloft. 'Bacon cakes for breakfast'. She grinned in return infected by his high spirits. As she reached up for the fettle, he drew her in for a lingering kiss.
Drawing back a little, reluctant to leave the safety of his arms, she said, 'I told you would always find a warm meal and a warm bed here. Which do you want first?'
'Food please,' he said with a sigh. 'I've not eaten all day - trouble with the coppers again – and I'm half starved'. He hung his coat and cap on the hook by the door and settled in to the easy chair next to the fire with a sigh of relief. She dished up some of the beef soup which was warming on the range and perched on the settee watching him intently whilst he bolted it down. 'This is good stuff, love,' he groaned. 'Any chance of some whiskey to go with it?'
She hated the taste of whiskey and he knew it. He also knew the penalty to be paid for drinking it before he came to her bed. With a wicked grin she fetched him the best tea cup and a new bottle of the Paddy Whiskey which she'd had fetched over from Cork especially for him. 'Why not have two?' she said a little breathlessly. Nothing made her catch her breath more quickly than the thought of Tommy Shelby bringing her to orgasm with his talented tongue. It was a price they both willingly paid for his love of whiskey. A pulse began to throb insistently between her thighs. How long would he make her wait this time?