"I was wrong... about him."
I cannot hold his gaze after saying it. Cannot manage the vindication which may surface there, in Inspector Campbell's eyes. Nor the sorrow and shame which flare in my own belly.
If I didn't feel the need to warn him I'd already be at the train station, abandoning everything for a chance at safety.
"Grace..."
His hand is gentle, as he reaches for my shoulder, a steady reassurance I cannot possibly deserve now. A comfort I should never have sought out, especially after...
Slanting daylight. The wild, dull disorder of grasses and graves. The impossible brilliance of a diamond, flashing amidst so much decay. "You deserve better," I had whispered then, meaning it, watching his face contort. Wanting anything but to be a burden and a disappointment to a man I've always admired.
He steps fully onto the cobblestones, turning me back towards his door like a leaf on the wind, taking my suitcase. I'm suddenly thankful for the deepening night and the misty haze and the brim of my hat as he ushers me inside the flat. Don't let him see you cry. Our professional relationship may have dissolved this morning but old habits die hard.
There are stairs and then a narrow length of hallway. The parlor I'm finally bid to sit in is as bright as day, every corner lit by candle or lamplight, the fireplace blazing high and hot.
Campbell retreats somewhere while I ponder it all numbly, but I can still feel his presence in the room's orderly design. Book spines and chair backs gleam in sharp, polished lines; draperies and rugs all appear freshly laundered or beaten; a snuff box is centered on the mahogany mantle, a pipe smoldering atop it. More telling, a tumbler of whiskey rests on the low table before me, the bottle beside it half-empty.
He returns before I can think on this any further, steaming teacups in each hand. I look away before he can view the full sight of my wet, streaked face, somehow hearing myself ask, "No biscuits?"
The question is a cruel echo I feel compelled to taste on my own tongue. For I cannot understand what has happened – how a person I felt so sure of could deceive me this well.
"No, I'm sorry..." Campbell ventures quietly, "They attract vermin."
My sob sounds hysterical in my own ears, as if I've gone mad. Perhaps I have, as I drop my head into my hands and rock forward, the tears threatening to blur everything again.
"Oh Grace, what has happened to you?" He's sits down beside me, the tea cups clattering on the table. "Was it Thomas? Did he hurt you?"
The raw edge of the question, the way he sounds feral and uncontrolled while his hand is so light on my back... I know I cannot tell him everything. I knew it when I slipped through the night to come here, buttoning my blouse up to my throat along the way... knowing I shouldn't speak it, even as a small sliver of my soul wants to divulge it all. To retch it up and dispose of the hurt like it is nothing more than sickness.
He'll try to kill Tommy, something whispers, deep in my marrow. If I reveal all of it, Inspector Campbell may seek him out this very evening and get himself killed in the process, no doubt.
"He knows." I stammer, "Thomas Shelby knows I'm an operative. He's known for some time. He claims to–"
I heave in a breath, trying to piece all of the broken pieces back together. Striving to understand how I could have missed so much while being so incredibly careful. Was it the constant, foreboding fear that distracted me, or the foolish intrigue of a man who understood me? I wonder at both clinically, like a surgeon assessing an open wound.
"What does he claim?"
The Inspector's palm is spread over my sodden overcoat, rubbing circles there. I can't take the kindness. I sit up straighter, sobering to the pity and the danger which float in tandem in this small room.
"When he first suspected my duplicity, he said he decided to test me – the hidden caches of liquor and cigarettes, that information was fed to me on purpose." I shrug out of my coat as I babble, feeling Campbell take it from my shoulders. "His men were watching, when yours started the raids. It confirmed his suspicions. Since then he's been waiting to see if I'd turn, if I'd eventually consider being an asset for himinstead... And then tonight, when you came to find him at the pub... I..."
"I know you hid him," There is urgency, as Campbell tosses my coat aside and pulls my shaking hands into his own. "But what did he do, Grace?" His weathered grip is so solid and sure. As if he could shield me this way.
"Before he told me everything, Tommy... he..."
The confusing bliss of the moment swims up, so fresh and cloying that it feels a sin to mare the happy moment with truth. Part of me wants to encapsulate it and keep it from the dark.
Campbell's voice shakes, making my head dart up at last, finding his eyes luminous from either drink or emotion, I cannot tell.
"Please, if he harmed you... I must know."
"He told me he loved me."
The words ring around the cheery, well-appointed room, like another proposal. I watch the slap of it harden Campbell's face for the second time today and decide again.
I cannot tell him the whole truth, I think... Of the slow dance which turned into a kiss, which turned into a confession, which turned into a violent struggle against the wall... Tommy's hands at my neck when I could not bring myself to say I would work for him in that way...
"But when I did not immediately reciprocate... when I declined his advances." I inhale deeply, seeing the moment anew, in this safe place. Realizing that love could have never truly bloomed amidst such rampant deception, alongside all the tests and lies and violence.
"Thomas told me everything I've told you, and then for the remaining debt he claims to owe me for hiding him tonight, he warned me to leave the city before daybreak. To get away before 'there's no one left to protect you from my family.'"
"He will not threaten you into anything." The squeeze of Cambell's hands over mine is warmth and strength. Like sunned stone.
I pull away and rip the hat from my head, rising off the sofa, too wary of my emotions and the edge of relief in Campbell's voice. Pacing before the fireplace feels familiar and calming, as if I'm once again secreting information to my department head, instead of rehashing a horrible revelation.
"No you don't understand. The black star day I've told you about, I don't think it's what he made it out to be. Thomas said tomorrow will be the end of order and law as we know it. What if it was never meant for Billy Kimber's gang? What if it is meant for you?"
I sense more than see the Inspector stand, his chuckle a sharp, vicious thing in my ears. Not at all the reaction I expected.
"Forgive me, but I can hardly believe the head of the Peaky Blinders would divulge such a dastardly plan on the eve of its conception – and to a suspected operative, no less."
He leans against the hearth as I walk back and forth, watching me while the fire coaxes warmth into my limbs.
"But there was a gun missing from the grave..."
It feels like I'm on brittle ground, bringing up the cemetery, but he answers without a waver.
"One of several hundred, which we now possess. If he truly wants a war on the streets, my men will be readied and equipped come morning."
Everything is now a jumble of information and misinformation. It will take me days to sort out the true from the contrived, if ever... but the same dark inclination which makes me believe the Inspector would try to murder Tommy this evening, if I divulged the detailed scuffle between us, tells me there is something greater at work here.
"I have spent months searching for those guns." Campbell reaches for his pipe, drawing deep on the dwindling embers. "They're as heavily guarded as the King's treasury now, I can assure you."
He gauges my movements for a long moment, concern etched there. I can tell he wants to say more but I cannot bring myself to stop moving or thinking of all the ways I have failed my department. My career. Myself.
So foolish, to fall for a person I only knew on the surface. A person who compelled me to murder a man while he beat the other to death before my own eyes... I was living with beasts, as Campbell long - warned. Living for isolated months without true perspective.
"Do you have a telephone, to call the department and check?"
"Yes, that would be prudent," he says softly, abandoning authority once more and stepping into the foyer. I almost wish he would stay professional. His compassion only manages to remind me of all my faults.
I move to the curtains, peeling back an inch of the heavy fabric to view the street below. Mist continues to curl and float along the cold promenade, lamp lights waxy under the haze. Perhaps if the room wasn't so bright I could view more. Assess any approaching danger.
Did I properly check if I was being followed, on the way here?
I try to remember any potential tails amidst the terror and turns of my journey, and find I can't. Campbell's voice floats out from the hall, distracting me. He sounds... concerned. Wary even.
He steps back into the room moments later, as I start to blow out candles, his gaze far-off as he watches me.
"I'd like a better view of the street, if that's agreeable," I explain. "What did they say?"
He looks away, dimming the lamp nearest him. The room turns honey-colored, despite the sharp edges of shadow.
"There have been no disturbances at headquarters and the guns remain accounted for. Two officers are on their way here, for guard duty."
"But something has happened?"
I watch him drop into an armchair. Catch him almost reach for the whiskey before taking a long drink of tea instead.
"Why did Thomas Shelby hint at his supposed plans after you refused him?" He wonders aloud, "To lead us down a false trail and distract the police from another venture?"
"What has happened, Mr. Cambell?" I press, snuffing out the last candle with my fingers so I can watch him fully.
"Civil unrest in Small Heath. Bonfires on the streets. It seems the Shelby's have been spreading discontent and arming citizens, as they threatened to do years ago. We must weather this storm while the beasts run rampant, I'm afraid."
I clench my hands to stop the shaking. "You haven't deployed a garrison, have you?"
"No, you are right to question the welfare of the guns, no matter the unlikelihood." He rises, moving beside me at the windows. "I will not divert manpower now, not in the dead of night with almost half my men asleep or at their leisure. It could very well be a diversion meant to spread us thin."
He growls out the last, peaking into the street, lamplight drawing a pale, yellow line down his cheek. Months in his service have taught me that his ire can become a spreading, volatile thing – capable of reaching in every direction at once. Towards the Peaky Blinders, Billy Kimber, the Lees, the lesser gangs and gypsies, and the paltry police force he has been assigned to manage.
But not towards me. His anger is not for me – at least not in this moment – because he has said we must weather this storm. As if he intends to protect me here.
No, I cannot stay, my conscious warns. I've delivered Tommy's supposed plans to the only man capable of disbanding his coming violence, yet there is always a chance for disaster. I have been in the Shelbys' service long enough to know they have eyes and ears everywhere. To find and dispatch me would be an easy thing, if I was to disobey Tommy's final, bitter threat and stay in Birmingham beyond daybreak.
"I have no right to ask," I begin, shame welling up anew, making me stumble over the words, "but could you spare just one officer? To take me to a train?"
"No." He barks, flapping the curtain shut. "You can't go out there now. I wouldn't trust your safety to fifty of my men on the street, much less one."
He reaches to grasp my hands again but I step back. "I don't have a choice. I should be dead already! If I don't heed him, if I don't leave–"
"I will not let them harm you, Grace!"
The wildness has returned to his crystalline gaze, a simmering wrath which does not bolster me. It used to – in the wake of my own spiraling rage and grief, after my father's death, when I needed to be snapped back into some semblance of reality – but not now that Thomas Shelby is an unpredictable, foreign person.
The threat I have misread as an ally haunts me: the gangster with assets beyond the Inspector's own reckoning. God only knows what Tommy plans for the day. Perhaps he's been planning it since he first suspected me weeks ago.
Has he been manipulating the police by feeding me false leads?
It's another dizzying course to contemplate, but Campbell takes hold of my shoulders before I can think on it further. "When my men arrive, I'll have to go out there, to aid the patrolling officers on duty. You'll be safe here, but just the same, did you bring a weapon with you?"
Panic flickers low in my gut, like the dancing shadows on the walls. Despite knowing Campbell can never truly protect me here, or anywhere else in the city, I find I do not want him to leave. I'm greedy for his fierceness and his familiarity. For the fortitude he conveys despite my rambling fear.
"No, please," I hear myself beg, "Don't leave – not unless you're taking me to a train."
A thought follows – a desperate, fraying ribbon I try to braid into a cord of possibility.
"Come with me. We'll both go. To London, or north instead. It doesn't matter. Just as long as we aren't here in the morning."
His hands curl around my shoulders, eyes darting over my face. Looking for meaning and truth, much like he did at sunrise, before I refused him.
"Why this terror? What did he really do to you?"
"Nothing," I breath, stumbling to pull the explanation back together. "Except warn me not to stay. I believe his threats, don't you?"
"Oh yes. That's all he is at his core – a murderer and an intimidator – but what else happened tonight, between you?"
"Nothing, I swear it." But my tone is too high and spindly, and a hand flies to my throat before I can stop the impulse.
I feel as if I'm unwinding, beneath the Inspector's searching glare. I haven't had the time to pack away my shattered infatuation with Thomas and the wound of it is bleeding too brightly, turning and twisting my usually careful voice into a fevered imitation of calm.
I close my eyes as I feel one of Campbell's hands skim across my shoulder, my neck tightening as he pushes my hair aside. He stills for a long moment before undoing the top button of my collared blouse, fingers tracing the tender flesh there, where the bruise must have already started to bloom.
"Jesus…" he exhales, pulling away, as if I'm damaged beyond repair. "I will never forgive… I should have never thought…"
The crack in his voice is too much then. I cannot bear another's pain on my account, and yet I've managed it again: the same man, broken-hearted for the same broken woman.
"It's done now," I whisper, blinking back fresh tears as I take his hands into mine. It's the first time I've offered them freely because I'm so terrified of what will surely come next: the storming, righteous path of a man bent on murder.
"The day after next, do as you will," I urge, watching his gaze flicker across the rug, anywhere but on me. "But please, we must leave the city tonight. Let this savagery stay behind us, for just a day, if that is all you can spare. Tell the department to barricade the guns until you return."
"You think a day away will calm my vengeance?!" He snarls. "That it will be enough to save him for you – because that's what you really want here isn't it, Grace, to save him. Despite the monstrous bastard he is? Despite what he's done to you!"
The accusation is so cold and vicious, I barely hold onto his clenched fists for fear of a new bout of violence. But there is also an aching torment in his voice, the same grief he hurled at me this morning. I must negotiate with him somehow, if I'm to gain any tangible safety tonight.
"You said he was between us, Mr. Campbell," I choke out, clasping him tighter as he tries to wrench away. "And the truth is he has been… I was deceived and seduced by Thomas Shelby, I will not deny it. But I never intended to save him from his crimes. I have served the pursuit of justice without wavering. It is my only accolade. And tonight was no different. I meant to engender his trust, by hiding him away, not to keep him from you... except, the foolishness of sentiment got the better of me and it was all for nothing."
The Inspector has gone very still, as if he has turned into a looming, gothic statue in my grasp. I suck in a breath, afraid he'll forsake me now if I stop explaining.
"I never imagined a life with him, or with anyone else for that matter. I've long accepted that I'm ruined for this world and the people in it… so when you asked me to marry you…"
When he doesn't prevent me I draw his hands to my chest and dip my head to them as if in prayer.
"When you asked me to marry you, this morning, Mr. Campbell, I refused because there is not enough of me left to be a wife. I would surely fail and dishonor you, and your admiration for me would turn to ash."
"You could never–"
"But this was something I could give." I rush on, "This warning and this clue, whether real or contrived, I do not know – but I am certain some of it holds at least a drop of truth."
I press the backs of his hands against my feverish forehead.
"So do as you will tomorrow but please, if you still love me at all, give me this one thing. Take me away from here tonight."
A log in the fireplace settles, popping and crackling. Dogs bark out on the street. A clock ticks somewhere, deeper within the flat.
I cannot bring myself to open my eyes and examine him. For I'm too afraid I'll be forced to leave here on my own, with harsh words and my pistol between us. I won't be penned in, waiting for daylight to seal my death warrant with the Peaky Blinders, no matter the cost.
"Please," I murmur.
He steps closer, and I let him fold me against his chest, my arms between us as he strokes my hair. Below the bitter tang of tobacco and whiskey, I realize his shirt smells of bergamot and jasmine. Like the sachets my launderer pins onto my own dry cleaning.
"It is truly done then?" He breathes against my temple. "Your... sympathy for Thomas Shelby."
I want to pull away, a fissure of anger cracking through the comfort I am so close to feeling somehow, in the arms of another man. Only an hour after heartbreak.
"Do you think I would still have feelings for a person who harmed me?"
His grip on me strengthens, as if he fears I might flee, "No, not in truth, Grace. Your heart might be too tender for this profession, but it is not beyond respect and reason. If you say it, I believe you."
He hugs me closer as I start to speak, hushing me gently.
"I will not ask for your hand in marriage again, for I fear two of your gentle refusals in the same day may cripple me... But just tell me that my love for you holds some value – that it at least means something to you – and I will find a way to do as you wish."
The passionate, hopeful turn of his voice undoes me for a long moment, and I find it difficult to logically weigh all of the avenues before me. Indecision for anything but escape has marred my ability to speak.
But then the stretching silence reminds me too much of my previous refusal, and I long to stopper the memory.
"Mr. Campbell, your admiration and love mean more to me than you will ever comprehend." I manage, finding the words to be the honest truth as they ring in my ears, no matter how fresh and bewildering they may be.
He's the only person who has ever tried to cultivate the best of me, despite my patchwork of flaws. That does mean something.
His breath hitches near my ear, the slightest movement of air in this hot room, and I know he is pleased. My own relief flares on the wings of his happiness, as I can already feel the dark, welcoming press of the train platform surrounding us. It is a promise he will not deny me now, I'm sure.
"Then I'll delay us no longer." He presses a long kiss to the crown of my head before striding into the foyer.
