Chapter 99

"It's yourselves," Johnny Dogs greeted them with a wink and a grin as Tommy pulled the car up, nearer than he had thought it wise to park when he'd come alone earlier in the week.

Rosie cast him one of her looks - he knew her one meeting with Johnny hadn't remotely been enough to endear the man to her. It was almost strange for him to remember long he had had to spend visiting the shop to earn her trust once upon a time, in comparison to how they were now, but he supposed he was about to be very much reminded of it.

Still, perhaps because of how they were now and because she trusted him, Rosie gave Johnny her hand and let him help her down from the car, though she seemed to take Tommy's arm more tightly than usual once he'd gotten out his own side and come around to her.

"On we go then, the hens are all aflutter," Johnny told them with a grin as he began to lead the way towards the Lee camp.

The reception was slightly less hostile than the one he'd had before - but he wasn't entirely sure if that was anything to do with the striking of their treaty being somewhat underway or if it was simply because he had a female with him. The Lee's held with his grandfather's way of thinking - that there were certain ways one treated woman that was different to how men were treated, regardless of whatever arguments existed between the men the woman in question was associated with.

Still, Rosie muttered to him, "Why am I not feeling like we're particularly welcome here?"

Hostile enough then.

"We haven't come to an agreement yet - we're on truce until it's finalised," he told her, "There's still a chance it could fall apart."

"And when will it be finalised - or fall apart?"

"Few hurdles to get over - first one is yours."

"Mine?" she demanded, stopping in her tracks and turning to glare at him.

"Your decision," he told her with a smile for the benefit of the surrounding Lee's, their pathway peppered with them.

"My decision on what?" she asked, narrowing her eyes even further and not returning his smile.

"On the girl you're here to meet," he told her, slipping his arm around her waist and forcing her to start walking again, trying to close the gap that had opened between them and Johnny Dogs, who was striding ahead, not seeming to have noticed they weren't right behind him any longer.

"Esme?"

"That's the one."

"What do you mean, my decision on her?"

He had told her in the car on the way over she was coming to meet the Lee girl Mary Lee had offered him. What he hadn't explained was why.

"See if you like her or not."

"Like her for what?" she asked, knowing he was avoiding telling her something.

"To marry John."

She stopped again, looking at him with wide, incredulous eyes.

"What?"

"What do you mean, what?!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up.

"You've said yourself that John's kids need a mother - a proper mother."

"Yes - they do - of course they do!" she spluttered, "But - but - you cannot bring me here to ask me what I make of the woman! John should be the one here to make something of her! And she of him!"

"She's about your age, this Esme, I thought it might make it easier for her if she got to meet you first. Less intimidating than throwing John at her, eh?"

"She's my age?"

"There or thereabouts."

He had been told she was sixteen, the girl, but the truth was she was probably seventeen, if not nearer eighteen. Fifteen was the standard marrying age amongst the Gypsies, she was already over it and Mary Lee had probably knocked a few months off her age to make her seem less like she'd been left behind.

That was why he'd brought Rosie. Truthfully, had he had no concerns, he'd have pressed on - the sooner the better really, all he had to do was get Lizzie out of the picture.

But there was a reason this girl was unmarried.

"She's a little wild - nothing a Shelby shouldn't be able to handle," had been how Mary had put it when he had laid out that his brother needed a wife.

"There are four children to be mothered," he'd told her.

"She's the youngest of her family, but she's been an aunt since she was about five," Mary had told her, "Besides, she grew up our way."

Meaning she'd grown up travelling, on the road, and camping. She'd grown up part of the group, pitching in like they all did, all the women together looking after the children and running the camps whilst the men looked for work and hunted.

But still, she had somehow passed the marrying age without being chosen. Perhaps she was simply was of little consequence to him.

"Does she want to marry John?" Rosie asked.

"She'll do as she's told," he shrugged, "That's the way of it out here. That's why you're here."

"You're going to need to be explicit here Thomas," Rosie said, her voice that stiff, snippy way it went at times.

"Look - I need peace with the Lee's - you saw the state of the shop," he said, his own voice curt, her lips curling into even more of a thin line at the sound of it, "And a marriage is a good way to secure it - and as it so happily happens, John needs a marriage. And the Lees have an unmarried young woman, too old to tempt anyone here as a first bride, who'll now probably have to wait for someone else to die before she'll get a chance at being married herself."

"You said she's about my age?"

"Fifteen is standard marrying age amongst Gypsies who live the traditional ways."

Rosie opened her mouth, then crossed her arms, closed it and gave a nod for him to continue.

"John's younger than me - probably the best scenario she'll be offered, remember that. But, I brought you because you'll see it from her point of view, you'll know what she'll want to know and be able to give her that information better than I can I reckon. And you probably know better than me how John'll be to his wife behind closed doors."

"John'll be sweet," Rosie said, a grudge in her tone that meant she didn't need to vocalise her implied 'unlike you.'

He sighed, "Yeah, well, John needs a wife, John's kids need a mother - but there's more reason than that on why I offered up him and not Arthur."

"Don't try and pretend it's because you care about the poor woman involved in this," Rosie told him through gritted teeth, "Your reason for leaving Arthur out of it is because John obeys you with less fuss - and even you have the sense to realise arranging people in marriages, even for your peace, will cause a fuss. It's peoples' bloody lives Thomas! You're fucking unbelievable at times, you know that?"

Her word cut like a lash. But he didn't flinch.

"Yes, I know," he replied crisply, "Now this is going to be done with or without your input. You get the chance to meet the girl and if you think she's not going to fit into the family, I'll stop it. But you bear in mind what I've told you about what her other options will be."

"And what if she doesn't want any of those options?"

"She's been offered to me - what makes you think she has any choice in those other options?"

"I'm not going to facilitate the forcing of a woman to go against what she wants Thomas - don't ask me to do that."

"I'm not asking you to do that - I'm very much giving you the chance to stop it."

"But you want it to happen?"

"I do."

Rosie glared at him, looked around her, at the assembled Gypsies, their guns in hand, watching them, gripped herself tighter and looked back up to him, "This isn't fair, Tommy. Not on me - not on the girl - not on John."

"Yeah, well, life isn't fair sometimes is it?"

"You promise me if I say no, you stop this?"

"I promise," he said, leaning close to breathe in her ear, "But you remember that shop and remember the car and remember what could have happened before you stop it."

"I hate you right now Thomas, I hope you know that."

The words did hurt - and they hurt because he knew they were the truth.

But he didn't let her see it, he just put his arm on her waist and started walking her forward again.

They walked on in silence - though he didn't need her to find words to communicate the rage that was coming off of her, as if it was seeping out her pores to reach him.

Still, as much as she couldn't understand it and, ideally, would never know it - he was doing this mainly for her. To make peace with the Lees and prevent a repeat of what had happened last week. To let her avoid sitting across a table from Lizzie Stark at Christma. And that it offered her the potential for companionship that she had been bereft of with Ada, then that was a bonus too.

It wasn't that he was entirely unfeeling of the way the girl, Esme Lee, would feel. If all went to plan, he would be taking her from her family and her known way of life to live settled. But Rosie just didn't understand. Esme, from birth, would have been expecting her family to match her off with someone. Not just anyone. Someone they would research, that they would deem suitable.

In the Romani tongue, Rom meant both man and husband, Romni both woman and wife. Marriage was so expected, and expected young, that the concept of an unmarried adult was not even given a name.

What he and Mary Lee had discussed, as heads of each of their families, was not unusual amongst his people. What was more unusual was his saying he needed Rosie's input.

"Romni?" Mary Lee had asked.

He had nodded.

"Yours?"

"My intended, yes."

"You would consult her?" the woman had asked, a touch of surprise and even suspicion in her voice, her eyebrows reaching her thick black fringe.

He had inclined his head again and Mary Lee had said no more, but he wasn't surprised to see the Queen standing on the stairs of her vardo, waiting for them to arrive. He figured only she really knew what she had done to take the crown from her father in place of her brother.

He had no problem understanding that women were smart. He knew Polly outranked Arthur and John in the intelligence stakes, there was no question about that. There were reasons too, why he hadn't gone down the route of offering his aunt for her second marriage.

But there was a difference from being respected enough as an aunt not to be offered as a bride without being consulted - and being accepted as a Queen. There had to be a ruthlessness to Mary Lee for her to manage what she had done. And, he rather suspected, the woman a man who headed his family would consult, would be of interest to her.

He took his cap off as a mark of respect once they came to a stop before her, inclined his head and said, "This is Rosalie Jackson. Rosalie Jackon - Queen Mary Lee."

The two women regarded each other in silence for a moment. Rosie's chin jerked up slightly and she held her head high, but for all he knew she was still annoyed with him, he felt her body press more closely to his. Her face betrayed no hint of nerves and the movement was slight enough to go unnoticed.

"Thomas Shelby cares for your opinion," Mary Lee stated from her stairs.

Rosie' lips rolled thin and he knew she was about to make a sarcastic remark, so he turned his head slightly and, barely moving his lips, breathed, "Behave."

She turned her head to him, raised an eyebrow, then looked up to Mary Lee and said, "Supposedly."

There was a pause, then Mary Lee smiled and descended the stairs, coming to stand in front of Rosie, narrowing her eyes and looking the redhead up and down, drinking in every inch of her like she was a particularly fascinating piece of art. He wondered if Mary, like him, thought she was.

"You're Gypsy," Mary pronounced.

Rosie shook her head, "No. I'm from Birmingham."

The Queen snorted, "You're Gypsy. Now, come on."

Tommy blinked, stilled for a moment in surprise by the statement. But then, not so surprised. He remembered the red haired Irish Gypsy who'd passed through, leaving his phrase of 'couried in' in his Uncle Charlie's vocabulary. He had said he'd take those odds, hadn't he?

He made to follow Rosie but one of the Lees stepped in front of him and put a hand on his chest, a smile curling across his lips as he evidently took pleasure in announcing, "No men."

Rosie turned back, her eyes flitting between Queen Mary and him.

He swallowed, trying not to let his panic show on his face - he had had no intentions of leaving her unaccompanied.

"You may wait here, he will be returned to you in one piece - you have my word," Queen Mary spoke, a note of amusement in her voice as she added, "If there is a woman Thomas Shelby consults, it is in my interest to have her sympathetic to me and mine."

Rosie's face remained impassive, then she turned and strode to close the distance between the Gypsy Queen and herself, all he could see was the set of her shoulders, rolled back and determined.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Tommy paced the first half hour away, then was eventually cajoled by Johnny into sitting down to a helping of hedgehog stew, Rez Lee - his ear still bandaged from where the bit of it that Rosie had stood in the kitchen in Watery Lane and cleaned had been cut off by Arthur and presented to Finn as a souvenir - glaring across the fire at him as he ate, Tommy taking malicious pleasure in smiling blandly back as if he didn't know what the glare could possibly be about.

They were still eating when he noticed a little head bobbing around a corner of one of the nearby vardos, a pair of large eyes fixing on him, then bobbing back around to hide anytime his met them.

It happened enough times that even Johnny Dogs, sat next to him and usually the sort to be engrossed in food, noticed and grinned, nudging him and saying, "You've got an admirer there boy, if it doesn't work out with that thorny little rose of yours, you've got options."

Rez turned, frowning, catching the head with the large eyes.

"Oi!" he yelled, lifting a hand and motioning the figure towards them.

A small body rounded the corner and sighed, it's feet trailing as it made its way over.

Rez put down his bowl and stood, throwing his red coattails behind him as he slid his hands into the pocket of his faded yellow waistcoat drawing himself up as the little girl finally brought herself before him, her eyes on the ground.

"What're you about?" Rez demanded, getting no answer, just the flick of a pair of large eyes in Tommy's direction for half a second before the gaze went back to the floor.

"Weren't you told to stay with the women?" Rez went on.

The girl nodded.

"There are strangers here. Now, get on with you and be where you're supposed to be," Rez finished, whirling the girl around and giving her a solid smack on her backside to get her moving.

Move she did, about ten paces, out of his grasp, before she turned and stared more blatantly at Tommy than she had done before.

"What did I just say to you?" Rez asked, his face turned to the child - but Tommy could imagine the face the man was pulling, a mix of stern rebuke and incredulity at being disobeyed, a hint somewhere probably of amusement at the character being displayed through the disobedience and a very knitted brow to try and over-compensate for that small amusement, more aimed internally, because the instructions given had been given for a reason and though he, the stranger in question this time, posed no danger to the child, there were other strangers who might.

"He's not gadze!" the girl protested, taking another few steps back, poised and quite ready to take her flight should Rez Lee look ready to make to close the distance.

"No," Tommy said, putting his own bowl down and standing, making his way around the fire to stand near Rez Lee, "I'm not. I'm Tommy Shelby. Did you have something you wanted to say to me?"

The girl looked at him and blinked, then looked to Rez.

"What's your name?" Tommy asked her, keeping his voice as gentle as he could whilst projecting it to where she stood.

"Aneira," she told him.

"That's pretty," he replied, "How old are you Aneira?"

"Six."

"My daughter's about the same age, she turned seven a few weeks ago."

"You have a daughter?" Rez Lee said, surprised.

Tommy slowly drew his eyes off the child to regard the man, "I didn't decide to make peace because you threatened me. My youngest brother isn't a man yet. My daughter and my intended were out the day you came."

Rez didn't say anything.

"She yours?" Tommy asked, indicating the child with his eyes.

"No, but she is part of the familia," Rez shrugged, "She is a niece of the girl you might take."

Tommy's heart almost gave something of a lurch, realising Rez, gruff as he was about it, was protecting the girl though she wasn't his directly.

That was the thing, about the traditional way of living. The familia, the extended family, meant that whilst there were always grandparents, parents and children, all children were everyone's to watch over. Problems were everyone's as were victories. Responsibilities were shared, everyone had a role that contributed to the greater familia. His grandfather's beliefs in how to be a man had been borne of being brought up in such a way.

It was, in much of it, a disciplined way of living - falling short on your contribution meant being answerable to the group. But the pay off was the freedom of the way of living. The moving. Never being cooped up.

Truthfully, there were elements of living in the traditional way that might have made Tommy feel more settled than living the settled way did. For the first time, it occurred to him to wonder how this Esme Lee would be, would feel, living in the settled way for what it was, rather than wondering how she would be living settled with John, with four kids.

"If the pretty Queen with the red hair likes Esme, you going to take her?" Aneira asked him suddenly.

They thought Rosie was a Queen. He wondered if she knew. What she'd make of it.

"Not for myself," he told the child, "My brother, he has no wife but he has four children who need a mother. If our Rosie reckons your Esme will like them and will fit in, she might come live with us."

"They're laughing - lots."

"That right?" he asked, keeping his voice calm, not laughing himself from relief.

Aneira nodded, "At men."

"Women laughing at men. At times I think there's enough of that to make the world go round," Tommy said, flicking his eyebrows.

"You Tommy?"

"Yup. They laughing at me?"

The girl nodded.

"Sounds like all those women are needing a good hiding to me, same as you are you little toerag," Rez said somewhat affectionately to the child.

Or, at least, Tommy presumed he was addressing the child.

"You can't give a Queen a hiding," the girl told him.

Tommy was tempted to tell her he'd see about that, but he stopped himself. If a laugh at his expense got him what he wanted in the long run, so be it.

"What she saying about me then?" he asked her, lighting a cigarette, offering one to Rez, who took it without a word of thanks.

"That you're ridiclus."

Ridiculous. Standard.

"But that she loves you anyway," Aneira continued, "And that you saved her when you took her away."

Tommy covered his emotions by inhaling long and hard on his cigarette, keeping it in one side of his mouth and exhaling slowly from the other.

"Was it a dragon?" the girl asked, her voice getting excited, as if this was what she had wanted to know the entire time.

"Was what?" he asked, keeping the cigarette in place.

"That you saved her from? Was it a dragon?"

"You want to know something Aneira?" Tommy offered, finally plucking the cigarette from his mouth as the girl nodded, "Women like my Rosalie, they don't need saved from dragons. They are the fucking dragons. It's just the thick as fuck peasants with their swords and torches that don't understand them that they need saving from."

"Oh," Aneira said, scrunching up her face, thinking very hard for a minute, before she turned and finally scampered off - presumably to tell all the other children that as well as being a Queen, Rosie was a dragon.

He imagined he'd get her quite the reputation in no time at all.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Whatever tenderness she might have been feeling when she'd said in the hearing of Aneira that she loved him or that he had saved her, she was in no mood to display it to him. He spent the day and night being given a heavy dose of her finest silent treatment, other than when they stopped at the school on the way home from the Lee camp to pick up Lily and the three of them carried a conversation about Lily's day at school and about going to see Uncle Charlie and her horse the next day.

Lily, suffering from a bout of 'being back to school-itis' was clinging to them every minute outside of school and she made his punishment bearable, sitting on his lap the whole night, refusing to go out to play with Katie and the other kids, wanting to jabber inconsequential little nothings to him that meant the world.

When Rosie eventually pried her from him and took her up to bed, she came back down, stood in front of him with her hands on her hips and stated, "You ever try pulling what you're doing with John and Esme on Lily and I'll shoot you myself, Thomas Shelby."

He looked unamusedly up at her, "Wouldn't do that."

"Oh - now you want to play insulted and wounded at me thinking you don't have lines you won't cross when you're marrying your brother off?"

"You're not telling me no then?"

She sighed and took her hands off her hips, but crossed her arms, not quite ready to display any sort of open body language towards him, "The girl's excited."

"And you like her?"

"I do," she nodded, "Not that I think that remotely makes this right."

"You'll let me break this to John in my way, in my time?"

She nodded stiffly and he returned it.

They stayed as they were, him on the sofa and her stood above him for a moment or so, regarding one another.

"Are you going to sit?" he asked, indicating the spot next to him.

She shook her head, her lips pursing, "No."

"Are you going to stand over me all night?"

"I said I hated you earlier Tommy," she reminded him coolly, as if he hadn't spoken.

He nodded and raised an eyebrow.

"Do you like yourself when you do these things?" she asked, raising one in return.

He sat back on the sofa, pulled out his cigarettes and lit one, the sounds of his movements the only interruptions to the expectant silence.

"I've explained my reasoning to you," he reminded her, "Sometimes we need to do things that we don't perhaps relish in the cause of the greater goal."

"What's the greater goal?"

He stood up, coming to rest in front of her, not touching, but the space between them small enough that it almost felt stranger to maintain it than to break it.

"To serve my Queen. To keep her safe."

Rosie licked her lips, swallowed and nodded, then headed off up the stairs without a further word.

Thank you to the anon on Tumblr who suggested the name Aneira when I put out a call to name Alice Thompson earlier in the story - it was such a gorgeous name I immediately knew I wanted to use it but for a more special character, so the original name I had for Esme's niece got scrapped and replaced.