After Schwaben Hohe, they're brought to a medical tent-- they dug themselves out, but Tommy has dust in his lungs and a wound on the back of his shoulder that won't stop bleeding; Freddie still has the bullet lodged inside of him and breaks out into a fever the moment they're above ground; Danny has stab wounds that keep him moaning throughout the night.
Tommy can't stop coughing. His voice is perpetually rough and his eyes are dull when he wakes up at night. He feels the absence of his brothers, who are still in the trenches, and he feels the guilt for letting his friends, his buddies be hurt.
(He receives a commendation in the mail. Bravery. Medal to be collected upon release from hospital. Somehow he doesn't feel like it.)
It's within this strange sense of homesickness for people that he sees the nurse. She's much darker than any of the other nurses, her curls tied back underneath her cap. He looks at her and sees something familiar, and when everyone is asleep and she's on duty he coughs, once, raises his hand, and asks in quiet Romani:
This isn't technically what her unit is for, and technically they're supposed to be attached to the French unit two fields over, but Letty has already discovered that when lives are on the line, blood is in hand, and willing bodies are few and far between, all of that matters less than whoever shows up to do the work. She's taken a shift so others can get some sleep, mostly because she can't just now, but not entirely.
They can still hear the occasional gunshot from afar, but she barely registers it at all.
She's the type of woman that has become well known to those who have reason to be in the medical tents or anywhere between: a favorite with the seasoned soldiers that prefer blunt honesty and rejected by the newer or white collar officers that prefer someone comfort them no matter what, her dark eyes are hard and as straightforward as the rest of her, her back straight, her shoulders square. She's standing at the tent flap, finishing off a cigarette and watching the dark landscape outside, when she hears Tommy.
For a moment, she considers acting as though she didn't understand at all; she has a hard enough time with being a woman, with being sharp-tongued, with her skin and her eyes and her hair and with a dozen other things without that as well. But in the end she has to be honest with herself, too, and the vent for her cigarette smoke is not the only reason she's taken up position at this side of the tent when no one actively needs her elsewhere. She's had her eye on Tommy since he was brought in. She doesn't need the kind of trouble being Roma brings, but being Roma chose her, and in the end denying who she is will do her no favors either.
She snuffs the cigarette neatly with her nails, tucks away the remainder, and brings him the water he asked for.
"Enough of that," she admonishes quietly but not particularly harsh in English, as she hands the metal cup over. She stays close, reaching to peel back the edge of his dressing to see if that bleeding has stopped yet while she's here. "How are you feeling?"
For the first time since he arrived, he smiles: even if she answers in English she understood him, and it makes a peculiar sort of warmth spread through him. To have that part of him understood in the muddy, bloody fields of France feels like a balm, like home is closer than he thought.
For all that Danny and Freddie are friends, they don't know what to do with that part of Tommy. He leans forward to let her look at the bayonet wound, sipping at his water as if it'll turn the dust in his throat to mud at least.
"I'm alright," he says in his own thickly accented English. "That thing stop bleeding yet?"
It has, in fact: it's not healing by any stretch of the imagination, but it's no longer draining him slowly.
"Only just," she answers after a moment, her fingers careful and thoughtful in touching the skin of his back around the wound, feeling how warm it is, deciding it'll keep for now. She smooths the gauze back down in her wake, and presses on his shoulder to let him know he can relax again. "Be careful with it. The supplies here are too low to waste on pride and stupidity."
She's quiet a moment longer, glancing over his face, too, to see how clear his eyes are, the pallor of his skin as best she can in the lamplight. Close enough to satisfied, and seeing how he's taking his time with the water, she reaches to pull a chair over so she's ready to hand with the refill, tucking her skirt neatly under her out of thoughtless habit.
"Your friend's fever hasn't broken yet, but the other one has finally settled to sleep. One night doesn't make a pattern, but there can't be a second without a first."
Her fingers are gentle but certain on his skin, and he appreciates that: when she puts the dressing back in place he feels properly put at ease, like if she declares it alright it really is alright.
The first remark makes him huff a soft laugh, but he softens after that. He nods, glad at the latter but concerned about the former.
"Danny was in trouble before we even went underground," he says softly, curling his hands around the cup as if it were tea, or coffee, or any other impossible substance. "But Freddie, he-- saved my life." And not out of a sense of misguided duty to an NCO.
It isn't remotely the first time she's heard both of those sentiments, not out here; it's not about heroics but if there are survivors, someone to talk about what happened, that means someone was in the right place at the right time to get the others out, to cover their retreat - and this is one of the few cases where that man is in this tent, too, and not in pieces in a trench somewhere or buried under the earth. Someone always saved someone's life. Someone is always in trouble.
She frowns a little, listening without interrupting, because hearing it for the hundredth time doesn't take away any of the concern, and mostly the men here need to talk. They won't to their friends, these men they owe debts to and watch out for; but they will to her.
Although: "In trouble in what way?" She suspects she knows, but if there's an underlying, ongoing health issue she needs to tell the Lieutenant about, that's different as well as inviting him to keep talking.
He appreciates it: not that it helps with his own dreams, or the way he sometimes sits bolt upright like he thinks they're under attack, but it's good to tell someone.
That way, if he dies, if Freddie does, someone will still know. He sips his water and only then meets her eyes, shoulders hunched slightly. "Not with his body. It's his 'ead. He sees things, Krauts when there aren't any to be seen, bombs when the sky is clear of 'em."
She wasn't far off, then, not that she's surprised. She makes an impatient noise in the back of her throat, tinged with disgust, but it's not aimed at either soldier.
"But he'll still be handed a gun when we've got him on his feet, and sent back down to fight things that aren't there as well as things that are." She swears - and like him, finds it feels unexpectedly good to do so in Romani and know that they'll fall on ears that understand them - and has to twist her fingers into the hem of her top to keep from reaching for the cigarette butt again. She wouldn't light it anyway, not this close to a man with more than air in his lungs.
Instead: "You boys are from one of those small units, aren't you? All local boys run off to take up arms."
"I started in the yeomanry," he nods, and looks up at her at that: she must understand why he went with that at first. Her curse still rings in his ear, and he feels oddly comforted by it.
"But we went into the tunneling company after that. We all grew up in the same neighborhood in Birmingham."
Letty is not an emotional woman. Not that she doesn't have them, of course, and not that she's afraid to tell those closest to her exactly how much they mean to her, nothing like that. But she firmly believes that there are some burdens that must be carried alone, not the least because this particular burden is one shared by so many. Those closest to her now have their own grief and their own loss to shoulder. She can carry her own.
So she doesn't talk about it, doesn't let anyone else into this one closed off, barbed wire wreathed part of her heart, the one where she packs all her guilt and all her anger where her brothers should be, where she hides the hurt when she remembers what their laughter sounded like and the way they smiled at her. She carries it with her and most days, is not diminished for it, knows full well she has gained at least as much if not more than she lost, and more than enough to be genuinely happy.
But tonight, for all that she's used to Tommy's nightmares by now, for all that she has her share of startling awake in the dark at loud noises and distant voices, she wakes up choking on it and immediately separates herself from Tommy. Tonight she rolls out of the bed and on silent feet flees to the room down the hall, the first empty one she can find, and this is where she lets it have her as she folds down into the well-used cushions of the sofa, biting her knuckle hard enough to bruise to keep the sound of the crying she can't explain and can't stop from waking anyone else, if she hasn't already.
There are things between them that aren't spoken of, and the loss of Letty's brothers is one of those things. They can talk about how far away from family she is now, and how Tommy tries hard to make his family hers as well, but they never talk about her brothers anymore. Not after that first time.
She is firm about it, and he doesn't contradict her. She cannot pull his demons out of him; he cannot crush hers.
He doesn't wake up when she rolls out of bed that night- he's a light sleeper, but Letty is lighter still. But when he rolls over and finds her place in the bed cooling off and empty, he sits up. It's the middle of the night and there's no reason for her to have been gone this long.
He thinks foul play, immediately, before discarding that notion. Far more likely that there's something else wrong, and so he slips out of bed, holding a lamp in one hand and pushing open the door to her room with the other. And it breaks him, when he sees her like that, curled up and trying not to wake anyone when she's obviously in physical pain borne from grief. He hitches in a breath and steps forward until he's kneeling in front of her, eyes big and concerned.
"Letty," he whispers, tightly, before slowly reaching up to cup the back of her head.
The worst part is, will be, that if he'd been only a few minutes later she would have had herself back together; that's what she'll tell herself anyway, the same thing she's told herself this whole time, that she'll give in to it and it will be done. No one has to know. She doesn't have to be here again.
But she sees the light from the lamp fall through the door, she hears Tommy's tread and she knows she's about to be found out, and that sets the hooks deeper somehow. She could retreat again, perhaps, could force the issue on this too but she can't find it in her to stand before he's already in the doorway. She wipes quickly at her cheeks, her eyes, though fresh tears wet her skin again immediately; it's hard to get a full breath in, and she makes a low, terrible sound in her throat as she tries to swallow back down what refuses to be dismissed again.
Then he's there in front of her and she is a strong woman, she is, but he says her name like that and he touches her hair just so and all at once she doesn't have the strength for this. She uncoils just enough to reach for him, both arms around his neck, leaving the curtain of her hair and the space against his shoulder to hide her face while she sobs anew.
He doesn't try to tell her it's alright, because it isn't: Tommy came back from France with his family broken but still alive. If either of his brothers had died, anonymous in the mud, he doesn't think he'd be able to go through the days like she does.
So it's not alright, and he doesn't try to pretend it is. Instead he wraps his arms around her waist to pull her up against him, as close as he can get her, as he hushes her softly and strokes her hair. "I'm so sorry," he whispers instead, rocking her as best he can. "I'm so sorry, Letty."
She fights for a moment, just briefly, aimlessly, the spark of who she has to be in order to do exactly that, to get through the days; she pushes back like she might get up, storm out of the room, hit him. Something, anything to stop feeling what this feels like. Certainly if anyone else tried to touch her just now they'd pay for it in blood of one fashion or another.
But it's Tommy, and her first instinct remains her strongest, and she lets him gather her in and it feels worse for several moments, feels like she's ripped open and raw and powerless to stop it, but then she starts to feel better. Then she starts to feel like maybe at long last, she can let go of some of this pressure.
She doesn't know how long it takes to quiet herself again, to let the rocking motion she didn't notice start up lull her, to listen to the sound of his voice and let it draw her back. Her fingers are digging into his shoulders like she has to physically anchor herself to him or risk drowning; she breathes deeply, wetly, and sighs out a shuddering breath.
"Women's hysterics," she croaks, disgusted with herself, grateful, and utterly unable to even lift her head yet, let alone stand on her own. Her grip has relaxed on his shoulders, but her fingers remain crooked and cautious.
He lets her wind down in her own time, lets her cry and wheeze and grip him as hard as she can. In that time he's moved up on the sofa, pulled her up close while he sits there and rocks her. It's breaking his heart to see her like this, but he does notice when it goes from something shameful to something helpful. It isn't good, but it's better, and he lets that console him at least a little.
At least he can be there for her. He tries not to think of her life alone, on the road, with that loss weighing on her.
"I know," he says, and finds that he sounds proud when he speaks to her: proud of her strength, and proud of her ability to let go, now. "I always hoped that when you did, I'd be there."
She wouldn't argue that it wasn't strength, of course, but far more than that it had been fear that held her together for as long as it did; fear of exactly this, that once she started she wouldn't be able to stop, that she would still be alone out there somewhere, vulnerable and trying to fight against every obstacle before her as well as her own broken heart and loss of self.
But she held it together long enough to make it to safety, and now that she's here, it was only a matter of time she supposes. It's painful, crying this hard, and her voice is thick with it, and she'll have a headache all through tomorrow, but she's heard that sometimes it helps. That sometimes after all of that, she'll feel better. Time, wounds, healing. She has to trust in that.
Or trust in him, which hasn't been the easiest for either of them, but apparently isn't impossible.
"I just... it's so useless. All of it. And I know all the words, but it doesn't change anything. It just hurts. It just hurts."
"I know," he whispers, raising a hand now to stroke it through those thick curls of hers. "Nothing can make that right. I can't lie to you about that. But you need to know that I'm here- I'm here if you need me for anything, Letty."
To match his handkerchief, Tommy had said, but she also stands out like a bonfire in a paper house and she's pretty sure that's no coincidence. The women at this level of society have a second sense about these kinds of things, take one look at her and how she's wearing that dress and that hat and her hair slicked down and wavy and glossy with oil and know she doesn't belong here. The men, though, see something new and maybe even exciting and that's enough to overlook the color of her skin when she's wearing this dress and standing in this room - which means that somehow, some way, she must belong, right?
The way the man - Kimber - is looking at her is making her skin crawl and it's everything she can do to keep from glaring back at him. She taps into her teenage days, before the war, when it was her job to smile prettily and distract the gadje from whatever tomfoolery her brothers were at this time. She doesn't smile now but she manages a cool detachment rather than outright hostility, smoking her cigarette and sipping her drink, and wishing like mad she could hear what the men are on about with their furtive glances at the side of her face.
She's fucking beautiful, is what she is. Tommy's wearing a nicer suit than
he usually does at home, and he's put on a posh accent to get them in- oh,
he's accompanying a visitor from Spain, showing her the best of England,
yes, isn't she just charming?
A few well-placed smiles on Letty's part, perhaps a lilting si,
Espana or two, and they're in.
Tommy isn't the one wearing the red handkerchief. He stands on the balcony
with her and points out the man who is, though, even if he's a prick.
"We need him. If we are to be a legitimate company, we need him for now."
It's an even easier ruse here, where few enough people have ever encountered anyone from Spain, could even tell if she was using the right posh accent of her own or not - which she is, because she was once a fucking professional - and she doesn't mind that part.
She sips her drink, watches Kimber from the corner of her eye without seeming to look away from Tommy, and raises an eyebrow.
"I thought I was your excuse for being here," she points out, an unspoken, earnest question: what does he want her to do about it?
"I'm sure you understand that, if given a choice, a man would much rather
look at you than at me," he says, easily, reaching into his waistcoat for
his cigarettes.
"I need him to listen to me, and considering the fact that he is easily
distracted by beautiful things, you would give me a great advantage."
It isn't the first time she's been asked to be someone's beautiful thing, but it has been a long time. She levels a stare on him, then tucks a strand of hair back behind her ear and smiles her Contessa smile. It doesn't quite reach her eyes.
"Show me where you'd like me to stand, Senor Shelby. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can go."
He realizes that this is probably not what she thought the day would
consist of, but he's a pragmatist: he didn't want to go to his knees to
pick up Billy Kimber's fucking shilling, but to further the proceedings he
did. If she's going to stay on with the company, with the family, she'll
have to go along.
He suspects she already knows how to do that. She isn't soft.
He offers her his arm as they make their way down the winding staircase,
like a proper gentleman. "The boys are working on the tracks right now,
taking out Kimber's protection. The Lees are kin, but they don't have our
high standards. They've been skimming off the top, and we are going to
offer Kimber a better alternative."
And she, like a proper lady, accepts it; she reminds herself not to stare at her feet to make sure she doesn't trip over these long skirts, and does in fact make it successfully down the staircase while she listens to him.
"I thought Arthur looked a little too happy before he left," she comments, dryly, although she's worried too. The man has a demon in him, and he very rarely seems to have control of it. "Is it worth the bad blood?"
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Tommy can't stop coughing. His voice is perpetually rough and his eyes are dull when he wakes up at night. He feels the absence of his brothers, who are still in the trenches, and he feels the guilt for letting his friends, his buddies be hurt.
(He receives a commendation in the mail. Bravery. Medal to be collected upon release from hospital. Somehow he doesn't feel like it.)
It's within this strange sense of homesickness for people that he sees the nurse. She's much darker than any of the other nurses, her curls tied back underneath her cap. He looks at her and sees something familiar, and when everyone is asleep and she's on duty he coughs, once, raises his hand, and asks in quiet Romani:
"Some water, sister?"
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They can still hear the occasional gunshot from afar, but she barely registers it at all.
She's the type of woman that has become well known to those who have reason to be in the medical tents or anywhere between: a favorite with the seasoned soldiers that prefer blunt honesty and rejected by the newer or white collar officers that prefer someone comfort them no matter what, her dark eyes are hard and as straightforward as the rest of her, her back straight, her shoulders square. She's standing at the tent flap, finishing off a cigarette and watching the dark landscape outside, when she hears Tommy.
For a moment, she considers acting as though she didn't understand at all; she has a hard enough time with being a woman, with being sharp-tongued, with her skin and her eyes and her hair and with a dozen other things without that as well. But in the end she has to be honest with herself, too, and the vent for her cigarette smoke is not the only reason she's taken up position at this side of the tent when no one actively needs her elsewhere. She's had her eye on Tommy since he was brought in. She doesn't need the kind of trouble being Roma brings, but being Roma chose her, and in the end denying who she is will do her no favors either.
She snuffs the cigarette neatly with her nails, tucks away the remainder, and brings him the water he asked for.
"Enough of that," she admonishes quietly but not particularly harsh in English, as she hands the metal cup over. She stays close, reaching to peel back the edge of his dressing to see if that bleeding has stopped yet while she's here. "How are you feeling?"
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For all that Danny and Freddie are friends, they don't know what to do with that part of Tommy. He leans forward to let her look at the bayonet wound, sipping at his water as if it'll turn the dust in his throat to mud at least.
"I'm alright," he says in his own thickly accented English. "That thing stop bleeding yet?"
It has, in fact: it's not healing by any stretch of the imagination, but it's no longer draining him slowly.
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She's quiet a moment longer, glancing over his face, too, to see how clear his eyes are, the pallor of his skin as best she can in the lamplight. Close enough to satisfied, and seeing how he's taking his time with the water, she reaches to pull a chair over so she's ready to hand with the refill, tucking her skirt neatly under her out of thoughtless habit.
"Your friend's fever hasn't broken yet, but the other one has finally settled to sleep. One night doesn't make a pattern, but there can't be a second without a first."
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The first remark makes him huff a soft laugh, but he softens after that. He nods, glad at the latter but concerned about the former.
"Danny was in trouble before we even went underground," he says softly, curling his hands around the cup as if it were tea, or coffee, or any other impossible substance. "But Freddie, he-- saved my life." And not out of a sense of misguided duty to an NCO.
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She frowns a little, listening without interrupting, because hearing it for the hundredth time doesn't take away any of the concern, and mostly the men here need to talk. They won't to their friends, these men they owe debts to and watch out for; but they will to her.
Although: "In trouble in what way?" She suspects she knows, but if there's an underlying, ongoing health issue she needs to tell the Lieutenant about, that's different as well as inviting him to keep talking.
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That way, if he dies, if Freddie does, someone will still know. He sips his water and only then meets her eyes, shoulders hunched slightly. "Not with his body. It's his 'ead. He sees things, Krauts when there aren't any to be seen, bombs when the sky is clear of 'em."
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"But he'll still be handed a gun when we've got him on his feet, and sent back down to fight things that aren't there as well as things that are." She swears - and like him, finds it feels unexpectedly good to do so in Romani and know that they'll fall on ears that understand them - and has to twist her fingers into the hem of her top to keep from reaching for the cigarette butt again. She wouldn't light it anyway, not this close to a man with more than air in his lungs.
Instead: "You boys are from one of those small units, aren't you? All local boys run off to take up arms."
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"But we went into the tunneling company after that. We all grew up in the same neighborhood in Birmingham."
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So she doesn't talk about it, doesn't let anyone else into this one closed off, barbed wire wreathed part of her heart, the one where she packs all her guilt and all her anger where her brothers should be, where she hides the hurt when she remembers what their laughter sounded like and the way they smiled at her. She carries it with her and most days, is not diminished for it, knows full well she has gained at least as much if not more than she lost, and more than enough to be genuinely happy.
But tonight, for all that she's used to Tommy's nightmares by now, for all that she has her share of startling awake in the dark at loud noises and distant voices, she wakes up choking on it and immediately separates herself from Tommy. Tonight she rolls out of the bed and on silent feet flees to the room down the hall, the first empty one she can find, and this is where she lets it have her as she folds down into the well-used cushions of the sofa, biting her knuckle hard enough to bruise to keep the sound of the crying she can't explain and can't stop from waking anyone else, if she hasn't already.
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She is firm about it, and he doesn't contradict her. She cannot pull his demons out of him; he cannot crush hers.
He doesn't wake up when she rolls out of bed that night- he's a light sleeper, but Letty is lighter still. But when he rolls over and finds her place in the bed cooling off and empty, he sits up. It's the middle of the night and there's no reason for her to have been gone this long.
He thinks foul play, immediately, before discarding that notion. Far more likely that there's something else wrong, and so he slips out of bed, holding a lamp in one hand and pushing open the door to her room with the other. And it breaks him, when he sees her like that, curled up and trying not to wake anyone when she's obviously in physical pain borne from grief. He hitches in a breath and steps forward until he's kneeling in front of her, eyes big and concerned.
"Letty," he whispers, tightly, before slowly reaching up to cup the back of her head.
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But she sees the light from the lamp fall through the door, she hears Tommy's tread and she knows she's about to be found out, and that sets the hooks deeper somehow. She could retreat again, perhaps, could force the issue on this too but she can't find it in her to stand before he's already in the doorway. She wipes quickly at her cheeks, her eyes, though fresh tears wet her skin again immediately; it's hard to get a full breath in, and she makes a low, terrible sound in her throat as she tries to swallow back down what refuses to be dismissed again.
Then he's there in front of her and she is a strong woman, she is, but he says her name like that and he touches her hair just so and all at once she doesn't have the strength for this. She uncoils just enough to reach for him, both arms around his neck, leaving the curtain of her hair and the space against his shoulder to hide her face while she sobs anew.
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So it's not alright, and he doesn't try to pretend it is. Instead he wraps his arms around her waist to pull her up against him, as close as he can get her, as he hushes her softly and strokes her hair. "I'm so sorry," he whispers instead, rocking her as best he can. "I'm so sorry, Letty."
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But it's Tommy, and her first instinct remains her strongest, and she lets him gather her in and it feels worse for several moments, feels like she's ripped open and raw and powerless to stop it, but then she starts to feel better. Then she starts to feel like maybe at long last, she can let go of some of this pressure.
She doesn't know how long it takes to quiet herself again, to let the rocking motion she didn't notice start up lull her, to listen to the sound of his voice and let it draw her back. Her fingers are digging into his shoulders like she has to physically anchor herself to him or risk drowning; she breathes deeply, wetly, and sighs out a shuddering breath.
"Women's hysterics," she croaks, disgusted with herself, grateful, and utterly unable to even lift her head yet, let alone stand on her own. Her grip has relaxed on his shoulders, but her fingers remain crooked and cautious.
"I never cried, Tommy. I never did."
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At least he can be there for her. He tries not to think of her life alone, on the road, with that loss weighing on her.
"I know," he says, and finds that he sounds proud when he speaks to her: proud of her strength, and proud of her ability to let go, now. "I always hoped that when you did, I'd be there."
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But she held it together long enough to make it to safety, and now that she's here, it was only a matter of time she supposes. It's painful, crying this hard, and her voice is thick with it, and she'll have a headache all through tomorrow, but she's heard that sometimes it helps. That sometimes after all of that, she'll feel better. Time, wounds, healing. She has to trust in that.
Or trust in him, which hasn't been the easiest for either of them, but apparently isn't impossible.
"I just... it's so useless. All of it. And I know all the words, but it doesn't change anything. It just hurts. It just hurts."
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Cheltenham
To match his handkerchief, Tommy had said, but she also stands out like a bonfire in a paper house and she's pretty sure that's no coincidence. The women at this level of society have a second sense about these kinds of things, take one look at her and how she's wearing that dress and that hat and her hair slicked down and wavy and glossy with oil and know she doesn't belong here. The men, though, see something new and maybe even exciting and that's enough to overlook the color of her skin when she's wearing this dress and standing in this room - which means that somehow, some way, she must belong, right?
The way the man - Kimber - is looking at her is making her skin crawl and it's everything she can do to keep from glaring back at him. She taps into her teenage days, before the war, when it was her job to smile prettily and distract the gadje from whatever tomfoolery her brothers were at this time. She doesn't smile now but she manages a cool detachment rather than outright hostility, smoking her cigarette and sipping her drink, and wishing like mad she could hear what the men are on about with their furtive glances at the side of her face.
Re: Cheltenham
She's fucking beautiful, is what she is. Tommy's wearing a nicer suit than he usually does at home, and he's put on a posh accent to get them in- oh, he's accompanying a visitor from Spain, showing her the best of England, yes, isn't she just charming?
A few well-placed smiles on Letty's part, perhaps a lilting si, Espana or two, and they're in.
Tommy isn't the one wearing the red handkerchief. He stands on the balcony with her and points out the man who is, though, even if he's a prick.
"We need him. If we are to be a legitimate company, we need him for now."
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She sips her drink, watches Kimber from the corner of her eye without seeming to look away from Tommy, and raises an eyebrow.
"I thought I was your excuse for being here," she points out, an unspoken, earnest question: what does he want her to do about it?
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"I'm sure you understand that, if given a choice, a man would much rather look at you than at me," he says, easily, reaching into his waistcoat for his cigarettes.
"I need him to listen to me, and considering the fact that he is easily distracted by beautiful things, you would give me a great advantage."
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"Show me where you'd like me to stand, Senor Shelby. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can go."
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He realizes that this is probably not what she thought the day would consist of, but he's a pragmatist: he didn't want to go to his knees to pick up Billy Kimber's fucking shilling, but to further the proceedings he did. If she's going to stay on with the company, with the family, she'll have to go along.
He suspects she already knows how to do that. She isn't soft.
He offers her his arm as they make their way down the winding staircase, like a proper gentleman. "The boys are working on the tracks right now, taking out Kimber's protection. The Lees are kin, but they don't have our high standards. They've been skimming off the top, and we are going to offer Kimber a better alternative."
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"I thought Arthur looked a little too happy before he left," she comments, dryly, although she's worried too. The man has a demon in him, and he very rarely seems to have control of it. "Is it worth the bad blood?"
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He gives her a little crooked smile before turning away again, looking at the dance floor.
"Too late for all that. Say- do you dance?"
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