━━━━━━ ༻ 005 ༺ ━━━━━━
" His Soldier Heart "

          OUTSIDE THE SLIDING DOORS BEHIND him, the noise of their betting endeavours was in full bloom, as most mornings since they've gone legal thanks to the deal with Kimber. Though unspeakably grateful for the incone they were getting off of it, for the sake of an early family meeting dissecting his decision-making right before his eyes, Thomas had an unwavering annoyance building up from the constant clicks of coins on wood mixing in with chatter slowly passing into background noise.

His elbow felt the sturdiness of the chair's arm a little stronger than a few long minutes ago, when perhaps even his posture had been better sitting in it. Now, his right hand lifted lazily to his mouth the cigarette he was holding, while his eyes watched on unblinking the debate his family had proposed.

"You're awfully quiet," Polly stopped amidst the conversation soundly led by John and Arthur to return the attention to its natural center, towards Thomas. "You really ain't got nothing to say?"

Thomas sighed deeply, reaching forward under the expectant gaze of his family and putting out his cigarette in an ashtray while they all waited for his answer. "Well," he paced his speech slower than usual, though he required no more thinking towards fleshing out his answer. "It sounds to me like you've all already made up your mind."

Polly's jaw clenched at the nonchalance with which he commented his overall dismissal of joining the debate and actually defending his choice. It was infuriating to see her nephew expect his word to be considered law at that table, as if this business life she's been fending for them all was a mere extension of the war that had scarred him too deeply to leave behind
"And it sounds to me like you couldn't care less of our shared opinion, nor my advice."

"All I heard were complaints," Thomas retorted, his calm gaining through his tone a nuance of superiority. "If you do not like the money—"

"Do not stretch your arm further than your sleeve will reach!" Polly interrupted, her right fist closing on the table. It was a gesture of authority that drew Thomas' attention.

"Kimber, Campbell, Lee... Now Alloways," Arthur took into account the names that have demanded this family meeting in the first place. "It's starting to feel like more than we can handle. And what you owe to the deal with the Americans..." He lowered his voice and leant forward, "Tommy, we don't have that sort of cash."

A car's horn blew outside, startling their hushed conversation to a stop.

"What in the bloody...?" Polly faded her curse off deliberately, standing up once the car horns were replaced for banging on their door. Unlike the others, Tommy's sign that something was afoot was less in the ruckus and more in the silence that had fallen over the betting shop outsider their frail doors. There was only one thing capable of silencing men invigorated by the passion for bets so quickly and without at least a chance to an uproar of protest: a woman. By the single extra beat that thundered uncomfortably in his numbed chest, Tommy had the faintest hunch on who might be the one causing an interruption to his judgment.

As soon as Polly opened the doors to the betting shop, the voice that explaimed from behind him in utter joy confirmed his hunch and throbbed a second time liveliness in his tired heart.

"Arthur!" Jackie Alloways beamed to see a familiar face. After the creak of a chair, she recognized the man who had been sitting with the back at her, now slowly looking over his shoulder as a prelude to turning around, as well. "And Tommy. Apologies, but the gift I brought is for Arthur alone as we had the pleasure of sharing a drink." Jackie walked around the man that had previously posted himself in line of stopping her from advancing and held out a bottle of golden liquid. "Seems only fair you get to taste some real whiskey, brought all the way from my distillery back home." While she spoke, and the men stood up from their chair, Tommy stole a glance at his brother, enjoying to see more glimmer of light reflected from her voice into his eyes. He understood perhaps then, better than before, how Jackie had kept miraculously kind memories from the war: her voice calmed the hearts of soldiers more than her hands could ever hope to.

"It's the finest American Whiskey you've ever held under your mustache...," Jackie was however compelled to fade her praise of her favorite drink and still her excitement as she noticed Polly's hand blocking her way forward, towards the table at which the family was set.

"What's your name, girl?"

Anyone who thought only men capable of battling their pride with as little as a measuring glance of strength, surely has never met women like Polly and Jackie. Both one of a kind and both with their own personal power to defend, less so discreetly.

Jackie cracked a smile after completing her once-over of Polly. "Apologies," she freed her right hand and extended it forward. "I'm Jackie. Jackie Alloways."

"What brings you here, Miss Alloways?" Tommy asked, prompting Polly to release her straining grip on the girl's hand, because though Jackie would refuse herself the flinch or yelp, it was visible just how harsh his aunt's grip had been on her.

With only a nuance of stiffness brought to her smile, Jackie turned around to face Tommy, "You know me well, Mr. Shelby. The whiskey was just my attempt not to arrive empty handed."

Arthur walked around the table, passing his brother and welcoming the bottle brought by Jackie with a wide smile. "It's a handsome gift, love," he nodded his gratitude, fighting within him a war of restraint against his outgoing nature demanding a bone crushing hug, unfitting for their barely acquainted state. "Care to join us for a quick drink, then?"

"I normally would," Jackie joined her hands behind her back, "however I need my sobriety, regardless of how Tommy might answer to my proposition today."

"Which proposition might that be?" The left corner of Tommy's lips flinched upward once Jackie finally returned her attention to him. Now that there was a term of comparison, he could attest within himself that he liked it better when he was her sole focus.

"Well, it's more of an invitation, really," Jackie pretended her correction to be made on the basis of shyness, yet her smile's mischievous nature radiated the true intentions she held. "Or rather a little adventure. The most I can tell you is that there's a market a little outside of Birmingham, to its North. I can also tell you that I have a car and I'm willing to let a man drive it." To bring action to her words, Jackie fished the keys from the pocket of her tight vest wrapped in a gentle design of folded 'x' actoss her chest and the buttons that lined up from the base of her neck down to the very end of her checkered beige dress, above her laced boots. The split down the middle lacked buttons to seal the collared dress once that line fell lower than her knees.

Tommy's gaze climbed back up as the clicks of her keys dangling filled the room with noise. The offer was right in front of him and though spontaneity made him uneasy on his best days, something downright godly compelled him to reach out and accept the invitation.

It wasn't until they walked out of the Shelby Home and onto Watery Lane towards Jackie's newly procured car that their conversation found a salvation out of curious silence again. "It's not quite my Rolls-Royce back home," she apologized for the car, "but I've been told it's a sturdy model and it will do for running errands without having to beg my brother to chauffeur me around."

"Instead you beg me," Tommy chuckled, walking around the automobile with her and opening the door to the passenger seat.

"As touching as it is to know that you'd like to see me beg anything out of you, Mr. Shelby," Jackie took his hand and claimed her seat in the car, continuing on a suave voice through the open window of the door he closed behind her, "banish that sinful thought from your mind." She watched him walk back around the car and to the driver's seat, which she waited to see him settled in before continuing, "You are my guest, not my chauffeur. I'm letting you drive out of principle."

"Or because you don't want to stand out, as you probably did driving here," Tommy threw out there his read which he was certain to be correct about. Because he needed no confirmation whatsoever from her to know he was right, he continued with the inquiries, "Where's your brother?"

"Busy," her answer was delivered with nonchalance all too familiar for Tommy.

"Am I your second choice?"

"Does that offend you?"

"It is only normal that a stranger falls in second place before the men who've been present in a woman's life far longer than he had."

"Our little play of constantly deflecting each other's questions is much entertaining," Jackie had the chance to finally point out. "However, this rigidity does not help your case regarding that partnership offer I've had time now to consider with a sober mind, emptied of the fogs and delirious thoughts of fury. I have come to the conclusion that one of us will have to risk a little trust eventually if such an offer should ever have a chance of even properly being considered as pertinent. Consider this little adventure of ours in which I allow myself to be alone with you on empty country roads my trust being thrown on the betting table."

Though there was much to unfold when it came to everything Jackie ever spoke of, Tommy's mind remained stuck on the main conclusion to be drawn. She is considering the partnership, he couldn't help a faint smile at that thought, alone strong enough to make him start the car and drive off.

"I will hope to rectify my abrasive nature for your sake," he sighed after a while. "But do not be disappointed if you discover I am just as unpleasant anyhow."

Jackie leant back in her seat, getting herself comfortable, "If you were in any way an unpleasant man to me, we wouldn't have been here, right now, about to indulge ourselves in each other's company for an hour of sightseeing hills and forests I expect you to fabricate stories for each time my eyes start to drift in the temptation of a blissful sleep besides a stranger. Had you been an unpleasant man, I would have preferred I meet you as little as possible to ensure your money become mine."

"You don't trust me while you're alseep?"

"I barely trust you while awake," Jackie laughed, not so much for the sake of what she was saying — as it was the bare truth —, but for how short and blunt each of Tommy's questions was. "But now, I would simply rather you don't hear me snoring. The less men hear that, the better. It's embarrassing."

An uncharacteristic burn in his chest he knew by its green association yet dared not call by its name caused him to frown and fire a question without his usual filter of consideration and thought being plaster upon it beforehand, "Have a great many men heard your slumber's sounds?"

"When will you ask me something nicer?" Jackie rolled her eyes, turning her face towards the door and its window instead. "Like what's your favorite flower? Or oh, Jackie, what do you like to do when you are not living and breathing in a man's world, playing a man's game better than him?"

"I did warn you, you might find me unpleasant," Tommy sighed, his self-control dictating that he stared only ahead. "By the end of this adventure of yours, you might hate me."

"You think and speak so low of yourself that I am almost inclined to overlook out of pity your absolutely appalling indiscretion of asking me behind pompous words whether or not I am a whore."

Brought to shame by her frank remark spoken on the line of calmness that qualified them as two civilized people within the boundaries of their conversation, Tommy chose silence for the rest of their drive out of Birmingham. Once the buildings and the smoke was exchanged for fields and cleaner, brisky air, as soon as Jackie started giving vague directions at intersections on the dusty roads, he took his chance to sigh. "I apologize for my lack of manners, Miss Alloways."

"It is such a lonesome thing to be forever just a subject of desire's violent facets, yet never the one under its gentler gaze," Jackie mumbled, absent minded, seeing the quiet side of this foreign land that she could grow to love perhaps as much as the hills from back home, where her roots have already grown and a part of her heart still hid, buried. "Apology accepted."

"What's your favorite flower?"

Jackie was startled by his question to correct her posture and immediately check with her own eyes whether or not she heard well that his tone had held the luminance of a smile. Little lines in his expression seemed to tell her that she had missed his joy's painting on the canvas of his skin by a second. A clean slate, she thought, leaning her head back and staring at the sky above to think — the car she bought was not the best there could be, especially since it was missing its roof, like some rip-off of the newer British models that are still being kept from the wide market. A clean slate sounds nice, she repeated to herself within her mind, sighing away her urge to be as abrasive to his attempt to try again at their conversation as he had been before.

"I like lilac," Jackie admitted. "My grandmother used to have two such trees in her garden, one of a kind in the whole district. One white, one purple. They would bloom one at a time too, so the garden never missed its perfume. Have you ever smelt lilac, Mr. Shelby?"

"Never," he shook his head. Deep down, underneath that cold mask engraved upon him against his will during the war, he was relieved that she had accepted his apology truly, and not just on the surface, in which case their journey would have turned silent like a walk through the graveyards.

"Lilac is the scent of falling in love," Jackie explained to him, her mind drifting far away into her memories. "Some nights I dream that I am back in that garden. My grandfather is there too, and he's shaking the trees to make it rain fragile little petals all over me."

His plan was to steal only a glance at her, but like a taste of the most addictive drug in the world, one single glance was insufficient. Tough as he often acted, his soldier heart was no different than the others and he too weakened, enthralled by her voice enough to want to hear her speak of everything pleasant in the world. She'd lull him to forget the evils of men and he'd let her fill silence with sweet music — words spoken in passion.