Oceans [A.Shelby]

TWENTY-FIVE

Small Heath, Birmingham 1912

ARTHUR SHELBY seeked approval from nobody, but his family were also all he had. Although he was not a fool, what was said to him was thought over heavily.

Thomas wasn't one to hide his views, and in his mind Arthur was moving too quickly with a woman he surely barely knew. Time isn't a factor however, or so a young 21 year old Thomas Shelby didn't realise. Someone you have known 6 minutes can be less of a stranger than someone you have known 20 years.

"Go on, out with it. I can see you've fuckin' wanted to say something since Martha's birthday." Arthur snapped at last one morning, his brother placing the newspaper down.

"Right. She lives in a big house, with someone to do her tea in the morning, someone to do up the buttons on her dresses. Why do you think a woman like that would be interested in a man like you, a man who lives in a place like this?"

"Don't Tom." Arthur's reply heed a warning as his jaw tightened.

"Don't what? You asked." Tommy questioned.

"Don't get fucking involved in shit that ain't your problem, alright!" Arthur snapped.

"It will be our problem when she fucks off and leaves you after she's had her minute of rebellion. That's all you are, someone to fuck off mummy and daddy."

Those words, that was the last straw for Arthur Shelby to have his younger brother backed into a corner, icey blue eyes bore into his own.

"Don't speak about her in that way, Lill ain't fucking like that. You'd know if you'd give it five fucking minutes before deciding you don't like her..." Arthur backed away away from his brother, "you can be on the opposite side of the world to someone, a total stranger and you can still have love for them... You'll learn that, if only you gave people 2 minutes before you decide they aren't good enough to be in this fucking family."

Whether he wanted to admit it or not, Tommy's words burrowed deeper under his skin than Arthur would've liked. Zo deep that even he was questioning everything.

Was he good enough? What did she want? Was any of this even worth it in the long run?

Most of all, would he ruin her life? Of course he would, in his eyes she was a star and a bright star like Lillian May did not belong among a dull background like Small Heath.

She deserved better.

•••

"It's unlike you to be quiet and brooding, am I boring you? Shall I just go home?" Lillian teased Arthur as she walked beside him, they were on their way to the Garrison.

There was a silent, pregnant pause.

"Perhaps you should, go home," Arthur replied quietly, eyes meeting hers as her eyebrows furrowed in confusion, halting in her step.

"What?" Lillian questioned, Arthur stopping, too, "where has that come from?"

Arthur hung his head, Lillian raising a brow at his action and in response replying, "Arth if you're going to say something, you could at least look me in the eye and say it."

Arthur did look Lillian in the eyes, but he didn't have to say much for Lillian saw the look in his eyes and it looked much like regret, for what she could only assume was in pursuing her.

Perhaps it was childish to think Arthur could be the one to show her a different life, to show her what it was to be appreciated, to be useful. To do something other then be the perfect young lady.

In only two months Arthur Shelby had completely consumed Lillians mind, her waking thought was him, sitting across from her as they laughed over Lillian's rubbish attempts at a cup of tea. Him beside her in the theatre as she teased him with the nickname he'd gave himself, trouble.

She had dreaded the moment they would end, she had dreaded the day she would have to return home. The day she would stop visiting the Warwickshire estate and admit defeat, with no choice but to marry someone of her fathers choosing.

For weeks, she thought that day would never come, she was too strong minded to let something so good, fail.

But alas, defeat had come. Lillian took what she believed she saw in Arthur's eyes, and she'd left him with a few raw parting words.

"I don't know why there's this sudden change, but for weeks all I have thought is how I could never walk away from you, Arthur. You're a good man, with a good heart, I envy the woman who gets to keep it." That was it, what Lillian believed to be the last words she ever spoke from the man who had managed to make her feel a way she'd never imagined possible.

Arthur Shelby watched without a word, his heart clenched and his unspoken words at the back of his throat as Lillian's black heels clicked along the road, away from him.

Her long coat concealed her favourite dress, blush and not one her mother approved of at the seamstress but she had it made regardless to go with the times. Strangely enough, Lillian had thought before she returned to Birmingham that she would returm home with news of an engagement. How wrong she was.

Lillian was proved wrong, and even as her heart beat heavily in her chest, she revealed nothing of the sorts to the streets of Birmingham. Lillian May cried for nobody, in front of nobody, and one man would not change that.

Lillians driver drove her back to the estate where her maid answered the door to her in surprise.

"Miss May what are you doing back so early?" Emily asked her, to which Lillian shook her head in reply.

"I shall like to leave in the morning, could you began packing my things? I'll be in the library."

Lillian entered the library, the walls filled with tall looming shelves piled with books on all sorts There were books that had probably never been touched and never would be touched, and yet none had gathered dust and all were pristine.

Lillian wasn't there to read, however, she was there because she knew behind a cabinet built into the bookcase hid bottles of gin.

The fire crackled and splintered, lighting the room as the sun began to set and grow dark outside, Lillian was left to her own thoughts with her glass in hand.

It took hours for it to hit her, that Arthur said nothing, because his eyes said it all, and something rather foreign happened.

A substance escaped her eye, moving perfectly around her nose, to her lips, followed by another, this one not so perfect, splintering off and taking pigment with it.

She cried. She cried, because somehow in two short months Arthur Shelby had worked his way in, in ways she never thought possible.

TBC..