Chapter Text
The rain came down in cold, steady sheets the afternoon Y/N arrived at Arrow House. It was late October 1924, and the sky over Warwickshire had turned the colour of wet slate. Her shoes, practical brown lace-ups she’d polished that morning, squelched across the gravel drive. The wool coat she wore, once a respectable navy, had darkened to near black where the water soaked through. She carried a single brown suitcase, its leather corners worn pale from years of being shifted from one modest attic room to another.
She had not expected the house to be so grand.
Arrow House rose behind a curtain of dripping yew trees, its stone façade pale and unyielding, windows like dark, watchful eyes. A maid had met her at the iron gates and led her up the long path without a word. Now the girl, twenty years old, hair braided neatly down her back, stood in the echoing foyer, water pooling at her feet, trying not to drip on the black-and-white marble tiles.
Polly Gray appeared first.
She came down the grand staircase like a woman who owned every inch of the place, cigarette already burning between two fingers. Her eyes, sharp, dark, assessing, took in the newcomer in one slow sweep: the plain coat, the suitcase, the way the girl kept her chin lowered but her shoulders square.
“You’re the one from the agency,” Polly said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, ma’am. Y/N L/N.”
Polly exhaled smoke through her nose. “Three girls ran screaming out of here in the last six weeks. One lasted four days. The last one didn’t make it past supper. Charlie’s been… difficult.”
“I was told he’s two years old. And grieving.”
Polly’s mouth twitched, something that might have been amusement or pity. “Grieving. That’s one word for it. He screams for his mother every night. Wakes the whole bloody house. Thomas hasn’t slept properly since, ” She stopped herself, took another drag. “You’ve read the newspapers, I expect.”
Y/N had. Everyone had. Grace Shelby, shot dead in her own ballroom on Christmas Eve the year before. The headlines had lingered for months: Peaky Blinder’s Wife Murdered in Cold Blood. Vendetta Claims Another. Thomas Shelby Sworn to Revenge. The details had been lurid, then quietly buried under newer scandals.
“I won’t run,” Y/N said softly.
Polly studied her another long moment. “We’ll see about that.”
She turned without another word and led the way up the stairs.
The nursery was at the end of the east wing, far from the main bedrooms. The door was already ajar. Inside, the room smelled of milk and coal smoke and something sharper, fear, perhaps. A small boy sat in the middle of the rug, knees drawn up, face streaked with tears and snot. His dark curls were damp with sweat. He was clutching a wooden horse so tightly the paint had worn off its mane.
The moment Polly stepped inside, Charlie’s head jerked up.
“Mummy?” The word came out raw, hopeful, broken.
Polly’s expression didn’t change, but her shoulders stiffened. “No, love. It’s Aunt Pol.”
Charlie’s face crumpled. The scream that followed was high and piercing, the kind that made the ears ache. He threw the horse; it clattered against the wall.
Y/N didn’t hesitate.
She set her suitcase down, shrugged out of the wet coat, and crossed the rug in three quiet steps. She knelt in front of the boy without touching him yet, just close enough that he could see her face.
“Hello, Charlie,” she said, voice low and steady, the way one might speak to a frightened foal. “My name is Nanny Y/N. I’ve come to stay with you.”
He stared at her through wet lashes, chest heaving. “Mummy?”
“I’m not your mummy,” she said gently. “But I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.”
Something in her tone, soft, certain, without pity, made him pause. The next scream died in his throat.
Y/N opened her arms slowly.
Charlie looked from her face to her hands, then back again. Then, with a small, shuddering sob, he lurched forward and buried himself against her chest.
She wrapped her arms around him without hesitation. He was warm and trembling and smelled faintly of talcum and the sourness of tears. She rested her cheek on the top of his head and began to rock him, humming the first bars of an old hymn her own mother used to sing: Abide with me; fast falls the eventide…
The room went quiet except for the rain against the windows and the soft, wet sound of Charlie breathing into her neck.
Polly watched from the doorway, arms crossed, cigarette forgotten between her fingers.
From the shadowed hallway just beyond, another pair of eyes watched.
Thomas Shelby stood half-hidden by the jamb, black suit immaculate despite the late hour he’d kept the night before. A cigarette burned between his lips. The smoke drifted upward in lazy spirals. His face was carved from stone, hollow cheeks, sharp jaw, eyes the colour of winter sea ice. He had not moved since the girl knelt on the rug.
He had not expected her to be so… young.
Twenty, the agency papers said. Twenty and untouched, by the look of her: long hair still worn in a simple braid, no rouge on her cheeks, no hardness around the eyes. She was small-boned, soft where Grace had been all angles and certainty. Where Grace had burned bright and reckless, this girl seemed to glow quietly, like candlelight behind a cupped hand.
Charlie’s arms were locked around her neck now. His sobs had quieted to hiccups. She kept rocking him, kept humming, never once looking up to see if anyone was watching.
Tommy’s heart gave a single, hard thud, painful, unfamiliar.
He had not felt his pulse race like that since the night Grace bled out on the ballroom floor, since he’d knelt in her blood and screamed until his throat gave out.
He exhaled smoke through his nose.
The girl, Y/N, lifted her eyes then. Not to him, not quite. Just enough to register that someone was there. Her gaze flicked past the doorway, then dropped immediately. Colour bloomed high on her cheekbones. She ducked her head and pressed her lips to Charlie’s damp curls, hiding her face.
Tommy felt the corner of his mouth twitch.
Polly noticed.
She stepped into the hall and closed the nursery door behind her with a soft click.
“She’s good with him,” Polly said, low.
Tommy didn’t answer.
“She won’t last,” Polly continued. “None of them do. He’ll wear her down like the rest.”
Still no answer.
Polly studied her nephew’s profile. The way he stared at the closed door. The way the cigarette trembled, just once, between his fingers.
“Thomas.”
He crushed the cigarette out against the heel of his boot.
“Set up the rose suite,” he said.
Polly’s brows lifted. “The rose suite is next to yours. And Charlie’s.”
“I know where it is.”
“That’s not staff quarters.”
“I said prepare the room.”
Polly exhaled through her teeth. “You’ve not even spoken to the girl.”
“I’ve seen enough.”
He turned then, coat swinging, and walked away down the corridor without another word.
That night the house settled into its usual uneasy quiet.
Charlie had fallen asleep in Y/N’s arms an hour earlier. She had carried him to the small bed with its blue counterpane, changed him into clean pyjamas, and tucked the wooden horse under his arm. Then she had sat in the rocking chair beside him until his breathing evened out.
Now the nursery was dark except for the low glow of the fire banked in the grate.
Y/N had changed into her own nightgown, plain white cotton, high-necked, sleeves buttoned at the wrists, and brushed out her hair. The long strands fell past her waist in soft waves. She sat at the small writing desk, Bible open in front of her, reading by lamplight.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…
She did not hear the door open.
Tommy stood in the hallway, one hand braced on the frame. He had shed his jacket and waistcoat, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows. The top buttons were undone. A fresh cigarette dangled unlit from his lips.
He did not step inside.
He simply listened.
Her voice was barely above a whisper, threading the familiar words of the psalm like a lullaby.
…for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Charlie stirred once, whimpered. Y/N reached out without looking and laid her hand on his small back. The boy sighed and settled.
Tommy’s throat worked.
He stayed there until the grandfather clock in the hall struck one.
Until the lamp dimmed and she rose to blow it out.
Until she crossed to the window, looked out at the rain-slicked gardens, and murmured a quiet prayer he could not quite hear.
Only then did he step back, silent as smoke, and close the door between them.
He did not go to his own room.
He went to the study instead, poured three fingers of whisky, and sat in the dark with the decanter beside him.
He did not drink.
He stared at the empty fireplace and thought of blood on parquet, of blue eyes going glassy, of a life that had ended in screams.
And he thought of the girl in the next wing, soft, steady, unafraid, who had walked into a house full of ghosts and picked up the child who carried them all.
His fingers tightened on the glass.
She was not leaving.
Not tonight.
Not ever.
He already knew.
The days at Arrow House settled into a rhythm that felt almost ordinary, if ordinary could exist in a house built on secrets and blood money.
Y/N rose before dawn each morning, when the sky was still the bruised purple of pre-light. She dressed in the same plain grey wool dress she had arrived in, her only one suitable for work, brushed her hair into a tight braid, and slipped into the nursery. Charlie was usually already awake, sitting up in his cot with wide, watchful eyes, clutching the wooden horse like a talisman against the dark.
“Good morning, little mister,” she would whisper, and lift him out before he could start to cry.
The kitchen staff had learned quickly not to interfere when she was there. She preferred to make his breakfast herself: porridge simmered slow on the range with a generous swirl of honey and a knob of butter that melted into golden pools. She fed him spoonful by spoonful at the small table by the window, wiping his chin with the corner of her apron, talking in the soft, steady voice that seemed to calm him like nothing else.
“See the birds, Charlie? They’re flying south for winter. They know where it’s warm.”
He would watch her mouth move, then reach up with sticky fingers to touch her cheek. “Nanny,” he said on the third day, the word clumsy but clear.
She smiled so wide her eyes crinkled. “That’s right. Nanny’s here.”
By the end of the first week the word had changed.
They were in the garden just after lunch, the weak November sun breaking through clouds long enough to warm the stone path. Charlie toddled ahead, chasing a leaf that skittered on the wind. He tripped, landed hard on his knees, and his face crumpled in the way that meant a scream was coming.
Y/N was there in an instant, scooping him up, brushing dirt from his palms.
“Shh, shh, it’s all right,” she murmured, pressing her lips to his forehead. “I've got you, always.”
The words slipped out without thought. She froze.
Charlie didn’t. He simply wrapped his arms around her neck, buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, and sighed the long, contented sigh of a child who has finally found solid ground.
She carried him back inside without correcting him.
Tommy saw it all from the French doors of the drawing room.
He had taken to watching her openly now. No more hiding in shadows. He stood at windows, leaned in doorways, cigarette always burning, eyes tracking her every movement like a hawk on a field mouse. The staff had noticed. Whispers followed her down corridors, Mr Shelby’s taken an interest, but no one dared say it to her face.
She felt the weight of his gaze, though. Always.
That evening she found the first gift.
She had left Charlie napping and gone to her small staff room in the attic to change her apron. On the narrow bed lay a folded length of fabric the colour of fresh cream, so soft it looked like spun cloud. Cashmere. She recognised the weight of it immediately, far too expensive for her station.
A small card rested on top, handwriting sharp and unmistakable:
For the cold mornings. – T.S.
Her heart stuttered.
She folded the shawl carefully, wrote a short note on the back of the card, Thank you for your kindness, Mr Shelby, but I cannot accept such a gift. It is far too fine for me. – Y/N, and placed both items outside his study door before supper.
When Tommy found them an hour later, he stared at the neat, looping handwriting for a long moment.
Then he smiled.
It was small, barely there, a mere twitch at the corner of his mouth, but Arthur, passing in the hall with a bottle of whisky in hand, stopped dead.
“Christ almighty,” Arthur said, voice low with disbelief. “You’re smilin’. Actual fuckin’ smilin’.”
Tommy’s eyes flicked up. The smile vanished.
“Mind your own business, Arthur.”
Arthur leaned against the doorframe, grinning like a fox in a henhouse. “She’s got you twisted already, eh? Little nanny girl with the big doe eyes. Polly’s gonna have your bollocks for breakfast when she hears.”
“Polly already knows.”
Arthur’s grin faltered. “And she’s lettin’ it happen?”
Tommy didn’t answer. He picked up the shawl and the note, tucked both into his jacket pocket, and walked away.
The next morning Y/N returned from her walk with Charlie, down the long avenue of bare limes, the boy bundled in a woollen coat two sizes too big, to find her few belongings gone from the attic room.
She found them instead in the rose suite.
The room was at the end of the family wing, connected by a short corridor to both Tommy’s bedroom and Charlie’s nursery. The door stood open. Inside, her suitcase had been unpacked. Her Bible rested on the bedside table. Her nightgown, folded with military precision, lay across the foot of the four-poster bed. A fire burned low in the grate. A vase of late hothouse roses stood on the dresser, petals the soft pink of dawn.
She stood frozen in the doorway, Charlie on her hip, his small hand twisting in her braid.
Polly appeared behind her, silent as smoke.
“He had Finn and Isaiah move everything while you were out,” Polly said. Her tone was flat. “Said Charlie needs you close.”
Y/N’s throat worked. “This… this isn’t the staff wing.”
“No. It isn’t.”
Charlie tugged her hair. “Mama? Walk?”
Y/N swallowed hard, set him down gently. He toddled inside and climbed onto the bed, bouncing once, twice, delighted with the new space.
She turned to Polly. “I can’t accept this. It’s not proper.”
Polly’s eyes were unreadable. “Proper went out the window the day Grace died. Thomas doesn’t ask permission anymore. He decides. And he’s decided you’re staying close.”
Y/N’s hands twisted in her skirt. “I’m just the nanny.”
Polly studied her for a long beat. “You’re more than that now, girl. Whether you like it or not.”
She left without another word.
Y/N stood there until Charlie tugged at her hand, wanting to explore the new room. She let him lead her inside, showed him the window seat where he could watch the gardens, pointed out the little brass bell on the mantel that would summon a maid if he needed anything in the night.
When the boy finally tired and curled up on the rug with his horse, she sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the roses.
That night she read to Charlie in the nursery as usual, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, her voice soft and lilting, until his eyelids drooped and his breathing slowed. She tucked him in, kissed his forehead, and slipped through the connecting door into the rose suite.
The lamp was already lit.
Tommy stood by the window, back to her, hands in his pockets. The room smelled of his cigarettes and the faint cedar of his cologne.
She stopped just inside the doorway.
He didn’t turn.
“You returned the shawl,” he said quietly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“It was too much. I’m only here to care for Charlie.”
He turned then. The lamplight caught the sharp planes of his face, turned his eyes the colour of storm glass.
“Charlie calls you Mama.”
Her breath caught. “He’s confused. He’s grieving.”
“He’s not confused.” Tommy took one step closer. “He knows exactly who you are to him. And so do I.”
She lowered her gaze, cheeks burning. “Mr Shelby, ”
“Tommy.”
She looked up, startled.
“Call me Tommy.”
“I… I can’t.”
“You will.” He crossed the remaining distance in two strides, stopped just short of touching her. Close enough that she could feel the heat of him, smell the tobacco on his breath. “You’re not in the attic anymore. You’re here. Next to him. Next to me.”
Her heart hammered so loud she was sure he could hear it.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because Charlie needs you.” He paused, voice dropping lower. “And because I need you close.”
The words hung between them like smoke.
She couldn’t look away from his eyes, those cold, piercing blue eyes that seemed to see straight through every layer of propriety she’d ever wrapped herself in.
He reached out then, slow enough that she could have stepped back.
She didn’t.
His knuckles brushed her cheek, just once, feather-light, then fell away.
“Sleep well, Y/N.”
He left without another word, the door clicking shut behind him.
She stood there for a long time, fingers pressed to the place he had touched.
In the nursery next door, Charlie sighed in his sleep.
Down the hall, Tommy walked to his own room, closed the door, and leaned against it.
For the first time in months, he didn’t reach for the bottle.
He didn’t reach for the razor.
He simply stood in the dark and listened to the soft sound of her moving in the next room, slipping out of her shoes, brushing her hair, murmuring a prayer before bed.
And for the first time since Grace’s blood had cooled on the ballroom floor, Thomas Shelby felt something like peace.
It terrified him.
He smiled anyway.
The gifts began arriving like rain after a long drought, slow at first, then relentless.
The silk nightgown came on a Tuesday morning. Y/N found it draped across the foot of her bed in the rose suite when she returned from bathing Charlie. Pale ivory, bias-cut, the fabric so fine it slipped through her fingers like water. A single pearl button fastened it at the throat. No note this time, but the handwriting on the small velvet box beside it was unmistakable: Wear it. – T.
She stared at it for a full minute, cheeks burning, before folding it carefully and placing it in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, beneath her plain cotton shifts. She did not wear it. Not that night. Not the next.
Two days later, pearl combs appeared on her dressing table while she was downstairs reading to Charlie. Four of them, each set with tiny seed pearls and carved ivory roses, perfect for taming her long hair into the soft styles she favoured. She tried one that evening, watching in the mirror as the pearls caught the lamplight like stars against her waves. It looked too beautiful. Too much like something a lady would wear. She took it out again and returned all four to their velvet case.
The music box arrived on Friday.
She found it on the window seat after putting Charlie down for his nap. A small rosewood rectangle, the lid inlaid with mother-of-pearl. When she wound the key and opened it, the first notes of Abide with Me drifted out, slow, delicate, exactly the hymn she had hummed to Charlie that first night. The tiny porcelain figure inside was an angel, wings folded, head bowed in prayer.
Y/N sat on the window seat with the box in her lap and listened until the mechanism ran down. Tears pricked her eyes. She did not know why. Gratitude, perhaps. Or fear. Or something darker she could not yet name.
She kept the music box. It lived on her bedside table now, wound every evening so the hymn could lull her to sleep.
Tommy watched her reactions the way a man might watch a horse he intended to break, patient, unblinking, certain of the outcome.
He began taking them out.
The first outing was a picnic by the River Arrow on a rare clear Saturday. He drove the Bentley himself, Charlie buckled in the back seat between them, chattering about ducks. Tommy spread a tartan rug on the grass, unpacked a wicker hamper, cold chicken, bread still warm from the bakery, strawberry jam, lemonade in glass bottles. Y/N sat with her knees tucked beneath her skirt, feeding Charlie bites of bread while Tommy leaned back on one elbow, cigarette between his lips, watching them both.
“You look cold,” he said when the wind picked up.
“I’m fine.”
He shrugged out of his overcoat without asking and draped it over her shoulders. It smelled of him, cigarette smoke, cedar, something faintly metallic like gun oil. She tried to shrug it off; he pressed it down with one hand.
“Keep it on.”
She obeyed.
The next week he arranged for the park in Birmingham to be closed after hours. The carousel stood silent and waiting, painted horses frozen mid-gallop under strings of electric lights. Tommy carried Charlie up the steps, set him on a white stallion with a scarlet saddle, then lifted Y/N onto the one beside it. She clutched the brass pole, wide-eyed, as the mechanism groaned to life and the music began, a tinny waltz that echoed across the empty park.
Charlie laughed for the first time since she’d met him, bright, unguarded peals that made Tommy’s mouth curve in something dangerously close to a real smile.
Y/N could not stop staring at Tommy’s profile in the coloured lights. The sharp line of his jaw. The way the glow turned his eyes almost soft.
Afterward, he took them to a dressmaker on New Street.
The shop was closed to the public. The seamstress, a thin woman with pins between her lips, had been paid triple to stay late. Bolts of fabric were already laid out: dove-grey wool, soft lavender cashmere, cream silk georgette. All modest, high necks, long sleeves, hemlines well below the knee, but cut with the kind of elegance that whispered money rather than shouted it.
Tommy stood in the doorway, arms crossed, while the seamstress measured Y/N’s waist, her bust, the length of her arms.
“She needs a winter coat,” he told the woman. “Fur collar. Something warm.”
Y/N’s voice was small. “I already have a coat.”
“You have a coat that’s seen better days,” he replied without looking at her. “You’re part of this house now. You dress accordingly.”
The new wardrobe arrived in boxes over the following days. Day dresses, tea gowns, a velvet evening coat lined in sable. Everything fit perfectly. Everything looked like it belonged to a wife, not a nanny.
Y/N stammered thanks each time a new parcel appeared. Her eyes stayed wide, uncertain. She began avoiding his gaze, dropping her head when he entered a room, busying her hands with Charlie’s toys or her knitting whenever he was near.
She started overhearing things.
The maids thought she was deaf when she passed them in the corridors.
“…heard he kept three girls in London before the war. Actresses. Whores, more like.”
“Grace was different. She was a spy. Betrayed him to the Italians. That’s why they shot her.”
“Poor Mrs Shelby. Shot in her own house. Blood everywhere.”
“Mr Shelby’s not right since then. Drinks too much. Sleeps with a gun under his pillow.”
“Wonder what he wants with the nanny girl. She’s barely out of pinafores.”
Y/N pressed herself against the wall outside the linen cupboard one afternoon, listening until their voices faded down the stairs. Her hands shook. She did not cry then. She saved that for later.
That night she found the razor blade.
She had bathed Charlie, sung him to sleep, and slipped into her room just after ten. The lamp was low. On her pillow, her white cotton pillowcase, lay a single cut-throat razor, open, the blade catching the light like a silver smile. Beside it, a folded note in Tommy’s sharp, slanting hand:
For the men who look at you too long. Keep it close. – T.
Her stomach dropped.
She stared at the blade for a long moment, the edge so sharp it seemed to hum with menace. Then she picked it up carefully, closed it with a soft click, and slid it under her mattress, far enough that she could reach it in the night if she needed to.
She did not sleep.
She sat up in bed, knees drawn to her chest, the new silk nightgown still folded in the drawer because she could not bring herself to wear it. The music box played once, twice, the angel turning slow circles while the hymn drifted through the dark.
Tears came then, quiet, steady, soaking the neck of her cotton shift.
She cried for Charlie, who still woke sometimes calling for a mother who would never come back.
She cried for the maids’ whispers, for the women who had come before her, used, discarded, dangerous.
She cried for herself, trapped in a house of velvet chains, where every gift felt like a lock clicking shut.
And she cried for Tommy.
Because beneath the fear, beneath the razor and the notes and the dresses that were not hers, she had begun to see something else in his eyes when he looked at her.
Not cruelty.
Need.
A hunger so deep it frightened her more than any blade ever could.
She pressed her face into her knees and whispered the only prayer she could manage.
“Lord, keep me safe. Keep him safe. And please… please don’t let me love him.”
The music box wound down.
Silence fell.
In the next room, Tommy lay awake, staring at the ceiling, the connecting door between them ajar just enough to hear her muffled sobs.
He did not go to her.
He simply listened until the crying stopped and her breathing evened into sleep.
Then he reached for the cigarette case on his nightstand, lit one, and inhaled deeply.
The smoke curled toward the ceiling like a promise.
She was afraid.
Good.
Fear would keep her close until trust could take its place.
And trust would come.
He would make sure of it.
The locks arrived on a grey Monday morning, delivered by a locksmith who spoke only to Tommy and left without accepting tea. Two brass mortise locks, heavy and gleaming, fitted to the connecting doors, one between the rose suite and Charlie’s nursery, the other between the rose suite and Tommy’s bedroom. The keys were singular: small, notched, and kept on a thin silver chain around Tommy’s neck, tucked beneath his shirt where no one could see them but him.
Y/N noticed the change the first night.
She had put Charlie to bed as usual, story read, kiss on the forehead, wooden horse tucked under his arm, then crossed back into her room to find the door to the nursery ajar, the new lock plate shining in the lamplight. She tried the handle. It turned freely from her side. From the other side, she heard the faint click of a key turning before the door eased open.
Tommy stood there in his shirtsleeves, collar undone, sleeves rolled to the elbows. The chain glinted at his throat.
“New locks,” he said simply.
She swallowed. “Why?”
“So you can come to him if he wakes. And so I can come to you if you need me.”
“I won’t need...”
“You might.”
He stepped inside without waiting for permission, closed the door behind him, and turned the key. The sound was soft, final. He pocketed the key again, the chain disappearing beneath cotton.
She took a step back. “Mr Shelby...”
“Tommy.”
“This isn’t proper. The connecting door… people will talk.”
“Let them.” He moved past her to the window, looked out at the dark gardens. “The house is full of ghosts. One more won’t matter.”
He did not leave until she sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched. Only then did he cross back to the door, unlock it, and slip through to his own room without another word.
The next morning she found the lock on the nursery door had been altered too. She could enter Charlie’s room freely. He could not leave without her hearing the key.
She told herself it was for safety. Charlie was a wanderer now, toddling down corridors at odd hours. The lock kept him contained.
She did not mention how the other door, the one to Tommy’s room, remained locked from his side at all times.
He began entering without knocking.
The first time was innocent enough. She was brushing her hair before bed, sitting at the vanity in her plain cotton nightgown, the long strands falling like honey over her shoulders. The door from his room opened quietly. She saw his reflection in the mirror first, black waistcoat, white shirt, cigarette unlit between his lips.
She froze, brush midway through a stroke.
He did not speak. He simply crossed the room, stopped behind her chair, and watched. She could feel his eyes on the nape of her neck, on the slow glide of the brush through her hair. After a long moment he reached out, took the brush from her hand, and began where she had left off.
Slow, careful strokes. His knuckles grazed her scalp. She sat rigid, breath shallow.
“You have beautiful hair,” he said quietly. “Don’t cut it.”
She could not answer.
He finished, set the brush down, and left as silently as he had come.
The next night he came again. This time she was reading, scripture, as always, curled in the window seat with a blanket over her knees. He entered, closed the door, locked it, and stood behind her.
She felt him lean over her shoulder. His breath stirred the fine hairs at her temple.
“Psalm 23,” he murmured, reading aloud in that low Birmingham drawl. “The Lord is my shepherd…”
She closed the Bible with trembling fingers.
He straightened. “You read it every night.”
“Yes.”
“For Charlie?”
“For all of us.”
He studied her profile in the lamplight. Then he reached out, slowly, giving her time to flinch, and brushed his thumb across her cheek.
She had not realised she was crying.
The tears had come quietly while she read, thinking of Charlie’s small voice calling her “Mama” that afternoon, the way his arms had locked around her neck as if she might disappear. The word had slipped out again, natural as breathing, and she had hated herself for it.
Tommy’s thumb caught a tear, wiped it away.
“You’re good for him,” he said. “Better than I ever was.”
She turned her face into his palm before she could stop herself. Just for a second. The warmth of his skin against her wet cheek felt like absolution.
Then she pulled away, ashamed.
He did not press.
He simply stood there until her breathing steadied, then left.
The touches grew bolder.
A hand on the small of her back when he passed her in the hall. Fingers brushing hers when he handed Charlie to her. A palm cupping the back of her neck when she bent to tie the boy’s shoelaces, holding her steady, possessive, gentle.
She began to crave them.
She hated that she did.
The breaking point came on a Thursday.
She had overheard Arthur in the study that afternoon, drunk, loud, the way he got when the whisky hit hard.
“…Tommy tracked the bastard down in London. Italian. One of Sabini’s men. Put a bullet through his eye in a back alley off Dean Street. Didn’t even blink. Said it was for Grace. Said the whole fuckin’ vendetta ends with blood.”
Polly had hushed him, but the words were already out.
Y/N had stood frozen in the corridor, Charlie asleep on her shoulder, until her legs gave way and she slid down the wall.
That night she packed.
One suitcase. The few dresses she had brought with her, her Bible, the music box (she could not leave it), the pearl combs she had never worn. She left the silk nightgown folded on the bed. She wrote a note for Polly, I cannot stay in a house where men are killed for love. I am sorry. Tell Charlie I loved him. – Y/N
She waited until the house was quiet, until the grandfather clock struck one. Then she slipped down the back stairs, coat over her nightgown, suitcase in hand.
She made it as far as the garden gate.
A hand closed around her wrist.
She gasped.
Tommy stood in the moonlight, coatless, shirt open at the throat. His eyes were wild, pupils blown, breath ragged.
“Where are you going?”
She tried to pull free. “I heard… about the man in London. You killed him. For Grace.”
“Yes.”
His grip tightened, not painful, but unyielding.
“I can’t stay here,” she whispered. “I can’t live in a place where...”
“You’re not leaving us.”
She shook her head, tears spilling. “I have to.”
He stepped closer, crowding her against the cold iron of the gate. His free hand came up to cup her face, thumbs brushing her wet cheeks.
“You’re not leaving us,” he repeated, voice cracking on the last word. “I won’t survive it.”
The confession hung between them, raw, stripped bare.
She stared at him. Saw the hollows under his eyes, the tremor in his jaw, the way his breath hitched like a man drowning.
“I’m not Grace,” she said softly.
“I know.” His forehead dropped to hers. “You’re better. You’re clean. You’re… light. And Charlie needs you. I need you.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m scared.”
“I know.”
He pulled her into his chest then, arms wrapping around her so tightly she could barely breathe. One hand cradled the back of her head, fingers threading through her hair. His heart hammered against her ear.
“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered into her hair. “Not ever. But if you leave… I’ll come apart. Piece by piece. And Charlie will too. He calls you Mama. He thinks you’re staying.”
She shuddered.
“Please,” he said, Thomas Shelby, begging. “Stay. For him. If not for me.”
She stood there in the cold, his warmth seeping through her coat, his scent, cigarettes, cedar, gun oil, filling her lungs.
She thought of Charlie’s small hand in hers.
She thought of the razor under her mattress, the music box that played her hymn, the way Tommy’s thumb had wiped away her tears.
She thought of the man he had killed, and the man who had ordered it, and the blood that still stained this house.
And she thought of the hollow look in Tommy’s eyes, the same look she had seen in her father before he drank himself to death after the war.
She lifted her arms slowly.
Wrapped them around his waist.
“I’ll stay,” she whispered. “For Charlie.”
He exhaled, a long, shaking breath, and held her tighter.
She told herself it was only for Charlie.
She told herself the warmth blooming in her chest was gratitude.
She told herself the way her body melted against his was exhaustion.
But when he lifted her suitcase in one hand and guided her back inside with the other, when he unlocked the connecting door and led her into the rose suite, when he stood watching while she unpacked again, silent, watchful, possessive, she felt the first thin tendrils of something darker take root.
She was not leaving.
Not because she could not.
But because part of her did not want to.
The door clicked shut behind him.
He did not lock it this time.
He simply stood there until she climbed into bed, pulled the covers to her chin, and closed her eyes.
Only then did he leave.
She lay awake for a long time, listening to the house breathe around her.
The seeds of devotion had been planted.
They were small.
They were quiet.
But they were growing.
The Birmingham May Fair came early in 1925, the air thick with coal smoke and the sweet rot of caramel apples. The fairground sprawled across Aston Park like a glittering wound, steam organs wheezing, barkers shouting, coloured lights strung between the stalls like cheap jewels. Tommy had insisted on bringing them. “Charlie needs to see the world,” he’d said that morning over breakfast, eyes fixed on Y/N across the table. “And you need air that isn’t Arrow House.”
She had worn one of the new dresses he’d bought her: soft lavender wool, high-necked, long-sleeved, the kind of modest elegance that made her look like a lady rather than a servant. Charlie clung to her hand in his little tweed coat, eyes wide at the spinning carousel and the painted ponies. Tommy walked a half-step behind them, black overcoat open, hands in his pockets, cigarette perpetually between his lips. The crowd parted for him without being told to.
They stopped at the pony rides first. A boy, no more than seventeen, held the bridle of a fat chestnut pony with a white blaze. He had freckles and a crooked grin, hair the colour of straw under his flat cap.
“Two pennies a go, miss,” he said, eyes sliding over Y/N in a way that was neither subtle nor polite. “The little lad looks like he’d enjoy it. And you could ride behind him, keep him safe. I’d hold the reins myself. Make sure you don’t fall.”
Charlie tugged Y/N’s hand. “Pony, Mama?”
Y/N smiled down at him. “Maybe just once, sweetheart.”
The boy’s grin widened. “Smart choice. Name’s Billy. I’ll lift the lad up for you, miss. You’ve got lovely hands, soft. Bet you don’t do rough work.”
Y/N flushed, glancing away. “Just help him onto the pony, please.”
Billy bent, scooped Charlie under the arms, and set him astride the saddle with exaggerated care. His fingers brushed Y/N’s wrist as he steadied her while she adjusted Charlie’s grip on the mane. “There now. You’re a natural, miss. Pretty thing like you shouldn’t be stuck indoors all day. You ever get out to the dances? I could show you a good time.”
Y/N’s smile faltered. “Thank you, but I’m here with my family.”
Billy laughed, low and knowing. “Family, eh? Lucky family.”
Behind them, Tommy had stopped walking.
He stood ten feet away, cigarette forgotten, ash falling onto the toe of his shoe. His face was blank, dangerously blank. The kind of stillness that came before a storm broke.
Y/N felt the shift in the air before she saw it. She looked over her shoulder. Tommy’s eyes were locked on Billy. Not on Charlie bouncing happily on the pony. Not on her. On the boy.
Billy noticed too late.
Tommy crossed the distance in four strides. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.
“Off,” he said to Billy.
Billy blinked. “What?”
“Get your fucking hands off my son. And off her.”
The boy paled. “I was just...”
Tommy stepped closer. Close enough that Billy had to tip his head back. “You were just putting your grubby fingers where they don’t belong. You were just talking to a woman who isn’t yours to talk to. You were just flirting with my wife.”
The word landed like a blade.
Y/N’s breath caught. Wife.
Billy stammered something incoherent, dropped the reins, and backed away. A man in a peaked cap, Tommy’s man, Isaiah, blending into the crowd, appeared from nowhere and took the pony’s bridle, leading Charlie in a slow circle as if nothing had happened.
Tommy turned to Y/N.
His eyes were black with something feral.
“Come on,” he said. Not a request.
He took Charlie from the saddle, settled the boy on his hip, and guided Y/N away from the rides with a hand firm at the small of her back. The crowd parted wider now. No one met his gaze.
The Rolls-Royce waited at the edge of the fairground, engine idling. Tommy handed Charlie to Finn, who had been trailing them all day like a shadow. “Take him to the ice-cream stall. Stay there till I say.”
Finn nodded once and walked off with Charlie babbling happily about ponies.
Tommy opened the rear door of the Rolls.
“Get in.”
Y/N obeyed.
He followed, closed the door with a soft, expensive click. The partition was already up. The world outside became muffled, distant music, laughter, the clatter of rides.
Inside, it was just them.
Tommy sat beside her, knee brushing hers. He lit a cigarette with hands that were almost steady. Almost.
“You belong to this family now,” he said, voice low, velvet wrapped around steel. “To me.”
She stared at her hands in her lap. “I’m Charlie’s nanny.”
“You’re more than that and you know it.” He exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. “That boy looked at you like meat. Like he had a right. He doesn’t. No one does. Except me.”
Her throat tightened. “You called me your wife.”
“I did.”
“I’m not.”
“You will be.”
The words hung heavy.
He turned to her then, blue eyes cutting through the dim light of the car. “You want to know why I’m like this? Why I can’t let anyone near you?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
He leaned closer. “I’ve fucked a lot of women, Y/N. More than I can count. Whores in Small Heath when I was sixteen and needed to feel something. Actresses in London who wanted my name on their arms for a season. Barmaids who thought a quick go would get them a house and a ring. Spies who smiled while they slipped knives between my ribs.”
He paused, took another drag.
“Grace.” The name came out rough. “Grace was the worst. Beautiful. Clever. Lied to me every day she breathed. Let me love her. Let me put a child in her. Then sold me to the highest bidder. They shot her in our ballroom because of what she did. I still see her blood when I close my eyes.”
Y/N’s hands clenched in her skirt.
“Every one of them used goods,” he continued, voice dropping to a near-whisper. “Liars. Whores who wanted my money or my cock or my power. None of them clean. None of them stayed. None of them looked at me the way you do, like I might be worth saving.”
He crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray.
“You’re different. Untouched. Soft. Good. And I’m keeping you. I’m going to marry you. Put my children in you. Make you mine so no one ever looks at you the way that boy did tonight without losing their fucking eyes.”
She stared at him, horrified.
And yet, God help her, something warm unfurled in her chest at the raw, ugly devotion in his words.
She should have been repulsed.
She was.
But she was also… warmed.
No one had ever wanted her like this. Not sweetly. Not cleanly. But with this desperate, possessive hunger.
Tommy watched her face. Saw the conflict. Saw the flush on her cheeks.
He reached out, brushed a knuckle along her jaw. “You’re scared.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Fear will keep you honest.” He leaned in until his forehead rested against hers. “But you feel it too. Don’t lie to me.”
She closed her eyes. “I don’t know what I feel.”
“You will.”
He pulled back, opened the door, and stepped out. Offered her his hand.
She took it.
That night the house was quiet.
Charlie had fallen asleep with sticky fingers and a sugar high, tucked in with his wooden horse. Y/N had changed into her cotton nightgown, brushed her hair, said her prayers. She had left the silk one in the drawer again.
She was drifting toward sleep when she heard it.
A low, choked sound through the wall.
Then a crash, glass breaking.
She sat up.
Another sound, muffled, desperate. A man’s voice, raw with pain.
Tommy.
She moved before she could think.
The connecting door was unlocked tonight. She pushed it open.
His room was dark except for the low glow of the fire. Tommy sat on the edge of the bed, shirt unbuttoned, head in his hands. A whisky bottle lay on its side, amber pooling on the rug. Shards of a tumbler glittered near his bare feet.
He was shaking.
Nightmare. She knew the signs now, the way his shoulders jerked, the shallow, ragged breaths.
She crossed the room on silent feet.
He didn’t look up until she was close enough to touch.
“Y/N,” he rasped. “Go back.”
“No.”
He lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, wet. The first time she had ever seen him cry.
“Get out,” he said, but there was no force in it.
She knelt in front of him.
He flinched when she reached for him.
She didn’t stop. She took his hands, cold, trembling, and pressed them to her cheeks. Then she leaned in, wrapped her arms around his waist, and pulled his head to her shoulder.
He resisted for one heartbeat.
Then he broke.
His arms came around her hard, crushing her against him. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, fingers knotting in the cotton of her nightgown like a drowning man clutching driftwood. His body shook with silent, tearing sobs.
She held him.
She stroked his hair, murmured soft nonsense the way she did for Charlie, shh, it’s all right, you’re safe, I’m here, while he cried like a child against her throat.
He smelled of whisky and cigarettes and sweat and fear.
She didn’t pull away.
When the shaking eased, he didn’t let go. He simply shifted them both until they were lying on the bed, him curled around her from behind, arms locked around her waist, face pressed to the nape of her neck.
He didn’t speak.
She didn’t either.
She simply lay there, his heartbeat thundering against her spine, his breath hot and uneven on her skin.
Eventually his grip loosened. His breathing slowed.
He fell asleep holding her like she was the only thing tethering him to the world.
She stayed awake until the fire died to embers.
She told herself she stayed for him.
She told herself it was pity.
But when dawn crept through the curtains and his hand slid protectively over her stomach in his sleep, she felt that same warmth again, deeper now, more dangerous.
She closed her eyes.
And for the first time, she did not pray for escape.
She prayed for strength.
Because she was beginning to understand:
He wasn’t keeping her.
She was letting him.
And she wasn’t sure she wanted to stop.