Chapter 20

He made the trip out for water another twice before Finn was calm enough to consider going into the front room and facing everyone. Tommy half thought about telling him to go up to his room and have a lie down before dinner but he knew Polly would be ready to take her leave and that she wouldn't want to go without checking on him. Pol had been the sole carer of Finn whilst they'd been at war and she'd handed him back more gracefully than he reckoned he would have, given how he felt about Lily.

The truth was though, as much as he had chided Lily for seeming ungrateful earlier in the week and he didn't want to seem ungrateful himself, he wanted Polly to go. He had no intentions of going anywhere else tonight, he'd stay home. And he wanted to sit on the sofa with Rosie and tuck her small, frosty feet under his leg and talk to her without feeling he was being watched. He wanted to relax. Or relax as much as he could relax when what he really wanted to do was lay on the sofa and put his head in her lap and have her stroke his hair and reassure him. No, he wouldn't relax quite that much. But he felt a bit spent, and he wanted her uninterrupted presence as much as he could have it.

"Come on, Pol will be fretting herself," he said, putting his arm round his brother's shoulder.

"What will Pol be doing?" Pol asked, pushing the door open and coming into the room. Her patience for waiting had evidently let up.

Tommy met her eyes evenly and she glanced down at Finn.

"He took it well," Tommy told her.

She clicked her tongue and nodded, "Good. Right, head up Finn, nothing to be ashamed of – you've paid the price – that's a fresh slate, you know how it goes."

Tommy glanced down to see his brother raise his eyes a little towards their aunt. She walked over to them and patted Finn's head before reaching over and picking up her bag from where she'd left it on the sideboard.

"Well, I'm off now I know he's in one piece, there's plenty of leftovers for dinner – you make sure you eat something other than cake Finn, don't need your stomach aching as well as your backside or you won't sleep comfortably at all!"

"Bye Pol," Tommy said pointedly. Pol wasn't always the best when it came to words of comfort. She gave him a filthy look but turned and went.

"You want to come through or you want to go upstairs?" Tommy asked his brother as he heard Polly making her goodbyes to the girls in the front room.

He felt Finn shrug under his hold on him before saying, "Just go through I guess."

"I mean what I said Finn, you took it well, like a man," Tommy said, squeezing his brother to him.

Finn didn't reply and Tommy loosened his grip on his shoulder to turn the boy to him for a minute.

"Finn – before we go through – you know this is done now? Pol's right, you get a clean slate now, you know that, right?"

Finn nodded.

"Good, so I want you to know I'm not trying to go on at you – but why didn't you just come to me rather than pulling that to try and get my attention?"

Finn shrugged and Tommy resisted the urge to sigh and smack the boy on his tender backside. He knew he was difficult to be around sometimes, of course he knew that. But Finn should know – his whole family should know – when they needed something they should tell him. Family came above everything for him, that had always been the case. He was the one who stepped up to stay with Finn and Ada after all, surely they knew that he was the one who had chosen to be there for them? Surely they understood? Polly would have taken them herself, if he hadn't wanted them. But he wanted them to be raised in their own house, by him - if they couldn't have their own mother.

"Finn," said, trying to make his voice stern without being too hard.

"I didn't know that's what I was doing," his brother muttered.

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't do it on purpose – I just did it without knowing why."

"But you figured it out?" Tommy asked with a raised eyebrow.

Finn shook his head, "Rosie explained it."

"Oh did she indeed?" Tommy asked, managing not to roll his eyes as he was tempted to.

"Yeah."

Tommy didn't reply to that, he just turned it over. Bloody discussions. Bloody words. The woman who had told him to stop saying sorry because she didn't put anything by words – she put bloody everything by words.

"You know how Polly know-"

"Aunt Polly," Tommy cut across his brother.

"Yeah Aunt Polly," Finn said, accepting the pointer, "She knows what's going to happen before it does sometimes? Or knows whether a woman's going to have a boy or a girl before it's born?"

Tommy nodded.

"Rosie's the same, but it's about feelings not things. It's like she knows what you're feeling before you do, and she explains it to you and it makes sense but you didn't know that that was what you were feeling, or you didn't know what it meant or why. Even though I still don't think she has any feelings herself, maybe that's why she gets everyone else's."

Typical. That would be just fucking like him wouldn't it? To bring in another bloody woman who had a knack for knowing too much into the house. His stomach churned a little, wondering what she might have gathered about his feelings. The thing was, he had the same skill. It was what made him good at his business – he could read people, figure them out, figure out their breaking points. He just didn't bother trying to figure out feelings that weren't ones to be manipulated.

Outwardly though, he snorted and said, "And there was me thinking it was the little one was causing all the trouble."

"I like them. I know what I said-"

"Yeah but you said it when you were upset."

Finn nodded.

"And Lily's forgiven you."

Finn nodded again.

"And if I did a good enough job out there, you've forgiven yourself."

Finn tried to give him a smile, but it came out more of a grimace.

Tommy cuffed him gently on the back of the head, "Don't worry, I'm not expecting you to thank me for it, I'm just expecting you to move on same as I have."

Finn nodded.

"Alright then, but one last thing Finn, eh?"

The boy looked to him.

"I meant what I said – we protect family above all else. Family above everything else Finn, eh? And that's the case whether that's you looking after Lily or me looking after you – I'm not Polly or Rosie, I'm not a mind reader - if you need something from me Finn, I need you to tell me, alright?"

The boy swallowed but nodded. Tommy wasn't convinced - but things didn't just change overnight, ever. Well, except when he brought two girls into the house with no warning. But generally, they didn't. He just had to pay more attention to what his little brother was up to, make sure he was splitting his time more.

He crossed to the door and held it open for Finn, who headed through under his arm, visibly steeling himself. Tommy patted his shoulder before swinging the door to the front room open and pushing Finn gently through.

"Well that was good timing, Lily's just beaten me at Snap so maybe you could give her some competition?" Rosie said, turning to gaze at Finn over her shoulder from where she was sitting on the floor.

Tommy watched the boy give her a sheepish grin, then glance up to him before nodding, seemingly almost shyly.

Lily stood up, holding the cards haphazardly and offering them out to Finn, who crossed to her but took the cards and fiddled with them, neatening them into a pile and not looking at her.

"Do you feel better now?" Lily asked – and Tommy noticed there seemed to be something nervous in her voice.

Finn nodded, "Yeah. Sore, but better."

"I'm sorry I got you into trouble," Lily said then burst into tears.

Finn sighed exasperatedly and looked to Tommy, who raised an eyebrow at him and nodded at the child. Gingerly, Finn held out a hand to the girl, who took it as an invitation to throw her arms around him and cry into his stomach.

He glanced at Rosie, who rolled her eyes and shook her head in what seemed to be her own exasperation, before he awkwardly patted the back of Lily's head and said, "You didn't get me into trouble Lily, I got myself into trouble."

She didn't respond but continued to cry, until Rosie put her hands on her sister's waist and tugged her off of Finn, gathering her into her arms and standing, pacing the room and rocking her.

Finn and Tommy watched her, and she must have felt their eyes because she looked up at Finn for a minute then smiled and said, "Oh don't you worry Finn, she's just going through an adjustment period and crying because she's overwhelming herself."

"How?" Finn asked, clearly confused.

"Ah she's only had me for most of her life, it's new to her – caring about a wider set of people. And when we first came it was all new and exciting but she's settling in now and the excitement doesn't cancel out everything else and she has to process all the things that she didn't notice before. And she's only little, so it's a lot for her body to process – so she gets upset and has a cry and that lets some of it out."

Finn nodded. Tommy guessed the boy understood about crying letting some of it out, even if he didn't understand much else.

"Finn reckons you're a witch, thinks you understand too much about other people's feelings," Tommy said.

Finn blushed and ducked his eyes, but Rosie grinned, "I wouldn't mind some magic powers - but the boring truth is I spent a lot of time at that Central Library in town when I knew Lily was coming, tried to learn what all those experts had to say about children."

She was fifteen and Lily was six – Tommy's heart gave a jolt at the idea of a nine-year-old girl going to the library to try and learn how to raise a child. Not for the first time he wondered what in hell had been wrong with Molly Jackson. He had been sixteen when Finn was born, seventeen when their mother had killed herself – he had been scared then at the idea of having to step up and raise Finn and Ada, and he'd watched his mother raise John and start raising Ada. And he had Polly to help. And Arthur and John, to an extent. She had armed herself with what she found at the library, and she had done a good bloody job – alone.

"Well you obviously learned a lot," he said, "You do good with her."

"You're good with her too," she said, then, moving her eyes to Finn, "Good with everyone it seems."

He snorted, "You've not seen me outside the house."

She laughed and jiggled the child on her hip, "Point taken – good with everyone in your house then."

"I try – can't say I ever read any books though," Tommy said, taking a cigarette out and sticking it in his mouth before he commented on what he thought of her mother making a nine-year-old feel like she had to read the bloody books.

"I don't do half of what they suggested – they said you shouldn't pick the baby up or cuddle it – clearly I couldn't manage that for more than a minute after she arrived."

"Is Lily your sister or your baby?" Finn asked, wrinkling his face up.

"Both," she said with a smile, "Same way as you're Tommy's brother but you're his baby too."

"I'm not Tommy's baby!" Finn said, as though the idea was mad.

"Oh Lily, Finn's a silly boy, isn't he?" she said to the top of her sister's head. Lily's face was still pressed into her sister as she cried, although more softly now – the tears reaching their end.

Finn turned to look at Tommy to back him up, but he just smirked at his little brother, who rolled his eyes. He knew he could hardly ask Finn to start coming to him and telling him what he needed if he didn't start using those softer words in the first place, but – well – nothing changed overnight, like he'd already thought.

He braced himself, but managed to say with relative casualness, "Ah Finn's too old to be my baby – but he's my boy."

Despite the casualness in his voice, Finn still looked over his shoulder at him like he was mad too. His brother's eyes flicked between the smile Rosie was giving him over the top of the blonde head of her sister and his own face, clearly worried he'd wandered into an asylum.

"Can I go out?" he asked eventually, his eyes going to the front door, eyeing up his escape.

"Nope – you're in for the night, same as me Finn. Come on, we'll play snap eh?" he went to where Rosie had come to a halt as Lily's cries also came to theirs, "Lily bab, will you come to me a minute?"

The girl pulled her tear stained face out of her sister's chest but looked to him and agreed to be passed over.

"You heard what Finn said, eh? You didn't get him into trouble, he got himself into trouble, right? So there's no need for you getting upset – and he's been punished and you've forgiven him and I've forgiven him so we're moving on and he's feeling better, so you don't need to feel bad on his account either, eh?"

She nodded.

"Good girl, now – your sister is obviously rubbish at snap, but Finn's quite good, so what do you say we have a game before dinner?"

Lily nodded in agreement, laughing as Tommy got down on the floor, holding her carefully and groaning that he was too old to be crawling about on the ground, that he was an old man.

"Does the old man want a cup of tea?" Rosie asked him, with a raised eyebrow and an amused smirk playing around her mouth.

"The old man might need something stronger than tea if he's to get back up," Tommy replied, rolling his eyes.

"Arthur played at being my horse and he's older than you," Lily told him.

"Arthur played at being your horse did he eh?" Tommy said, "Didn't think he still had it in him. D'you remember when he'd be your horse Finn? He'd get you and Ada on his back and crawl about in here – Ada beating on him to go faster just because he couldn't smack her back when he was a horse?"

Finn laughed and came over to lie out on his stomach in front of the fire, shuffling the cards, "Yeah and one time John gave him a kick on the arse and he said he'd take it from Ada cause she was his princess but he wasn't taking it from a lout like his brother and he made us get off so he could chase John all down the back."

"I'm surprised you remember that – that was before George was born," Tommy said, grinning at the memory – he had pulled Finn into his arms to run out the back to watch as their two brothers had run in and out of the washing people had hung out to dry, jumping over the little walls that theoretically separated one person's allowance of the back space from the next.

"Serve you right if one of you falls and smacks your face and loses a tooth!" Ada had shouted at them, in an imitation of Pol, but Tommy had picked her up on his other hip and she had laughed along with them as John climbed the roof of the outhouse trying to avoid capture, hamming up his fear of Arthur for the benefit of the two youngest Shelby's.

Even back then Ada had always had notions of wanting to be older than she was, wanting to be seen as grown up – always imitating Tommy or Polly or Arthur – but it had been tempered by her joy of riding around on her brother's back and an attitude that could be easily humbled. His mind drifted back to the day before – to the idea of Wrighty sliding his hands wherever and Rosie telling him Wrighty was full of it to say it in the first place – he still wasn't sure what he believed.

A glass of whisky was put on the table by his head and he smiled round in thanks at Rosie, who settled herself on the sofa with tea.

"You not playing snap?" he asked, an eyebrow raised.

"Oh I'm rubbish at it apparently," she replied, raising her own eyebrow, "So I'll referee from over here where I've got a good view, because I'm not sure someone wasn't cheating earlier!"

"Lily did you hear that? That sister of yours is suggesting you were cheating – I don't believe my best girl would cheat, would you?"

Lily giggled and shook her head.

"Thought not, obviously she's just rubbish at snap and a bad loser too!" Tommy said, kissing Lily's head before taking a swig of the whisky.

Obviously the parenting books wouldn't have done him any good anyway, because how anyone was supposed to resist cuddling or picking up a baby was beyond him – beyond Arthur or Polly too, and if it was beyond them to harden themselves then it would be beyond anyone, he reckoned. Maybe he should start keeping an eye on the mothers who could manage it - start keeping tabs on them – dangerous women they'd be. Women like Molly Jackson, capable of doing real damage to the innocent.

Maybe he'd start a charity or something – take kids off of women like that all year round, give them homes where people would pick them up and cuddle them – and fuck what the books said. Kids, in his opinion, shouldn't be blamed for the sins of their parents, but he knew the parish authorities had other ideas. Still, he'd need to sort his own business first before he'd start a charity. Maybe he'd make that a goal of his – he'd know he was respectable, he'd know he'd made it when he'd made enough to buy a big house for him and Rosie to live in – with Lily and Finn and Ada if they wanted to come – and a second big house for all the kids he'd take away from parents who were whores and drunks and just plain hopeless cases. A place kids like Rosie Jackson could go if they were in her position, where they wouldn't need to worry about paying rent (and on that note, he was due a visit to her landlord to check in on that situation, to see whether her mother had been paying the rent or not) or being separated from their sisters or brothers just because the person who was supposed to take care of them had failed them.

They'd played two games of snap before Ada had come in looking for her dinner – and they'd plated up the leftover cake and sandwiches, sticking them in the middle of the floor in the front room and sitting around eating them in a way that would allow Finn to lie around as he had his dinner, rather than suffer the hard wood of one of the kitchen chairs or the humiliation of having to stand as he ate.

"Here Ada, why don't you bring that music thing in and play some of your records?" Finn asked as he stuffed a ham and cheese sandwich in his mouth.

"Cheers for the spray Finn," Ada had said, rolling her eyes – but she'd brought through the gramophone, eager herself to use it now that the drama had subsided and had played one record after another of the seven she'd received on rotation.

He wasn't entirely convinced that any of them were records she would have picked herself, but she seemed happy with them, though by far most taken with Al Jolson's You Made Me Love You – "I'd love to make someone love me when they didn't want to do it," she'd sighed after they'd finished it for the third time, to a snort from Rosie that the girl managed to turn into a half convincing cough when Tommy caught her eye.

They'd piled the plates up and Ada had demanded someone dance with her – which Finn allowed himself to be pushed into for the first half of the next song. He kept treading on Ada's feet though and Tommy eventually gave in to Rosie's pointed looks, chucked his cigarette down and tapped Finn on the shoulder before telling him to scram so Ada's feet wouldn't end up broken.

"Very gentlemanly," Rosie had snorted, "Just exactly how they phrase it in the stories when a man cuts in for a dance."

"You be careful – talking about stories, people will think you're going soft," Tommy grinned devilishly over Ada's head at her.

"Soft! Rosie!" Ada exclaimed sarcastically, "Wild Irish temper she's got, threatened to knock all of David Walker's teeth out yesterday."

"Ah we'll make that one yours then," Tommy said, nodding at her.

Wild Irish Rose was a record he'd picked up, on the pretence it was for Ada's birthday and much more because the redhead on the front did look a bit like Rosie. It was recorded by someone called Chauncey Olcott, a poor bastard Tommy almost felt a bit sorry for with a name like that, and it was from some musical in New York from what they could gather on the back.

She rolled her eyes at his comment, "Aye cause I'm the kind of person people write about and put in musicals."

Lily had wanted a dance after the song had finished, and he'd turned her around in circles to a cheery little record Polly had picked – a song he was sure his aunt would have hated, incidentally. Or hated publicly whilst listening to it privately.

"Right, my wild Irish Rosie, your turn," he'd said, extending a hand to her once Lily had sat down with a thump – and, he suspected guiltily, some dizziness in her head.

Rosie shook her head, snorting at him.

"Come on, I've had every other woman in the room," he said with a smirk.

"Well that's as good a reason as any to turn you down," she smirked back.

He rolled his eyes, "Come on."

She shook her head, "I don't dance."

"What do you mean you don't dance?"

"I don't dance."

"Can you imagine her dancing?" Ada said with a laugh, "Come on Tommy, dance with me again."

He'd kept his eyes on Rosie but given in and twirled his sister around the small space in the front room once she'd switched the song over without pushing the redhead any further. The thing was, he could imagine her dancing. And he had. And did. He'd imagined her in his arms and here and now, in the living room with Ada's birthday present – it seemed a chaste, heavenly way to give the devil his desire. But she had denied him.

Let me dance with her, let me have one dance and I swear I won't let it go any further than my hand on her waist, he bargained with some invisible power of the universe. Maybe with the devil. Though, if the devil was real then god had to be by proxy, and he didn't believe in god.

It was an annoyance, that he couldn't make his desires go away – but he was a patient man. He had to be. If he wanted to succeed in business, to see his strategies play out – it was just like in the war. He'd go down and build those tunnels and then, at some later day, those tunnels would get used to take down the opposition. He just had to keep tunnelling now, keep clay kicking. He couldn't make the desire go away, but he was no stranger to living with the desire.

But not tonight.

He'd given her his silence yesterday. He wanted something from her today. But judging by how she'd stepped out of his hold in the kitchen earlier, he wasn't the only one playing the game of denial.

So, he waited a while. He waited till she'd put Lily to bed and he'd seen Finn and Ada off and she was faffing about cleaning up the glasses and ashtrays and plates.

"Leave them for tomorrow," he said, loitering in the kitchen door as she dumped another load into the sink.

"Oh I don't want to be bothering with them tomorrow – or leaving them for Polly. You know it's not fair how you expect her to work in your business and run your house Tommy."

He raised an eyebrow, "Not fair is it?"

She caught his tone and turned and raised an eyebrow back, "No it's not."

"I'll tell you what's not fair," he said, coming over to pin her up against the sink, "What's not fair is me getting a dance with every girl in the room except you."

Yesterday, when he'd held her hand it had been the first time in weeks that they'd touched – and it had felt intimate and intoxicating. And earlier, over Ada's present opening, he'd touched her waist. And far from those small touches satisfying the desires he had had over the past few weeks to touch her, they had left him wanting more and so he wanted to press against her now – but he didn't, settling instead only to invade her space past what would have been appropriate to an onlooker, drinking in the smell of her.

She tilted her head back to meet his eye defiantly, "I told you – I don't dance."

"Why not?"

"I've never danced."

"So you don't know how?"

She shook her head, her eyes still boring into his. Like fire and whisky and tobacco and saints' halos, all rolled into the two holes in her head that he never wanted to see looking at another man.

"Well," he smirked down at her, "Luckily for you all you need to do is let the man take control."

She snorted, "Is that all? I'm not very good at letting a man take control Mr Shelby."

"Ah but it's not just any man, it's me."

"You reckon that makes a difference, do you?"

"I believe we've already had a conversation Miss Jackson about how if I decide on something there will be no letting me or not letting me on your part," he said, a smile lingering around the corners of his mouth.

Her little lips parted for a moment and her breath seemed to come a little more heavily at his words but she didn't reply.

"I'll judge by that that you remember exactly how I said I'd deal with disobedience?"

"I remember I said I'd consider agreeing to – to that – after a discussion was had, and only when I went against your rules that were about safety! I don't see that not letting you bully me into a dance is unsafe for anything except your ego Thomas Shelby."

"Now, y'see, damaging my ego is dangerous – there's many a man would try and tell you that, but they don't talk so good anymore without their tongues," he said, leaning forward and placing a hand on the sink on either side of her, resisting the urge to run his thumb along her lower lip – which still hung slightly open, small and delicate but slightly plumper than the top lip with its sharp points at its cupid's bow.

"You wouldn't take my tongue though, you'd just take me out the back?" she said.

She raised her chin at him and kept her face defiant, but at the same time her hands had gone to his exposed forearms and rested there quite gently.

"Take you out the back?" he snorted quietly, shaking his head, "No my darling girl, there'd be no need to take you out the back, you'd just go over my knee for a good old-fashioned spanking to make you nice and compliant."

She flushed but swallowed and retorted, "Nice and compliant aren't words that generally apply to me."

"Not where anyone else is concerned maybe, but they'll apply where I'm concerned," he told her, flicking his eyebrows, turning his arms and running them through her grasp till their hands met.

"You think so?" she asked, trying hard to keep the bite in her voice.

"Oh, I know so," he said, stroking his thumbs against the backs of her hands, still damp from the basin.

"You're a bully."

"Baboon, bat, bear, bully. Haven't heard of the last one, if I take us to London to go to the zoo can you point it out to me?"

"Oh I can point one out to you in the bloody looking glass right this minute Thomas Shelby! And don't be so facetious!"

"You know you're in a habit of pretending you don't want to agree to things with me whilst holding my hands, right?"

She snatched her hands away and he moved his to her waist, which caused her eyes to widen and her brows to shoot up, not so much in her usual sarcastic way. She didn't move, didn't push him off – though they both knew it was crossing some invisible line.

"So – what's it to be? My hand on your arse to make you nice and compliant or are you just going to be nice and compliant and let me have this dance?"

"Well I don't see that you're really giving me much choice," she attempted to snap, but failed.

He smirked, "Oh I've given you a choice – it's entirely up to you."

"Alright!" she shrieked, seeming to overcompensate for the lack of volume she had managed on her last sentence, "Alright, fine – I'll dance with you – and hell mend you when I break all your toes Thomas!"

"Alright, alright," he drawled, keeping his own voice lazy, squeezing her waist, "You know you don't need to bite my arm off, you could have just said you wanted a dance."

"Why you- ! One day Thomas Shelby - I swear to God!" she snapped and pounded her fist into his chest.

It hurt more than he was prepared to let on, so he grinned and caught the wrist of her fist in his hand and turned, using it to drag her through to the front room where he'd already placed My Wild Irish Rose on the player ready to go.

He lifted the needle on to the disk and held out his hand to her, "Come on," he half whispered.

She looked at him for a long moment before she placed her small hand in his and from there he tugged her gently round into his arms, half surprised and half not surprised at how compliant she was in letting him place one of her hands onto his shoulder, sliding her other hand into his, wrapping her fingers around his of her own accord. The submission had been there already, he supposed, but he couldn't quite believe his luck that she had offered it. He placed his other hand back on her waist and kept it there – his promise to be chaste if only he could hold her slipping into his mind again. Whoever or whatever he was bargaining with they'd given him this.

And so they danced, they bodies not quite touching – only joined where their hands lay. And he felt flames spreading from those areas that engulfed his entire body – in a way his body had never been engulfed by a woman's touch before, even when the touch in question had been in more intimate areas. And she was trembling as they did, her eyes not leaving his face. And he would happily bet all his money that she was feeling that same fire he was.

When the music stopped she stepped out of his grasp quickly and said, though she seemed short of breath, "I think I will leave the rest of the tidying up actually," and left.

He got the impression she was moving as quickly as she could without running.

He stood in the living room, breathing the air where she had been, his palms tingling from where he'd held her as they danced. He lifted the needle and played the song again – staying perfectly still this time as he relived and preserved every step they'd taken in his mind.

As always thank you so much for your reviews and messages, I massively appreciate them all!