Astor // Arthur Shelby x Reader - Peaky Blinders

Letter #1

November, 1914

Dear Brave Soldier,

I hope this letter finds you well, and that you are safe and healthy wherever you may be. I want to let you know that you are not forgotten, and your service and sacrifice are appreciated by so many of us back home.

I am told that you must be missing home after so many months away. I wonder if you remember the first frost on an autumn morning, the fresh gulps of icy air to the lungs as you take the dogs for a brisk walk, as I have just done. I hope discussing such matters of normality does not make you sad. If so, please tell me and I shall cease at once.

I cannot imagine what you must be going through. The horrors and hardships you must be facing every single day. But please know I am thinking of you and praying for your safety and well-being. You are a hero to me, and I am grateful for your service to our country.

They tell us on the radio what life will look like if we lose this war, and I hear the whisperings of how terrible our loss would be. I do not know how much of it is true and how much is sensationalised gossip, but either way it is enough to leave me frightened. I am so thankful we have men like you fighting for us. For a better life.

If there is anything you need, or that I can do to support you, please let me know. I will personally do whatever I can to help.

I have attached some food and supplies, including decent teabags and biscuits. You can share these with the other men in your squadron, or keep them all to yourself — I won't tell!

Thank you again for your service and sacrifice. You are forever in my prayers.

Sincerely,
Astor.

***

"You have to send a photo," Lucille tells me, placing the letter back on the kitchen countertop between us.

She returns to pickling vegetables in the vast expanse of our kitchen. Not for the first time, I reflect on how ridiculous it is — a kitchen larger than many terraced houses, and staff to maintain it. My sisters have long married and moved away to New York, leaving just me and my parents here in Sotheby House. My mother barely eats, and my father has a palette no more expansive than meat and potatoes. He'll occasionally tolerate a gravy, if he's feeling particularly brave.

Not that I ought to complain. Because their snobbery and their love of throwing around in conversation the fact they have staff means Lucille continues to live and work here. And beside being one of my two best friends in all the world, with her flaming red hair and Roman nose, she makes the best full English I've ever encountered.

"Who's sending a photo?" asks Pauline, my other of two best friends, moving quickly through the room with an armful of linen.

Pauline has even less use in this house than Lucille — not only is her title Governess in a house with no children, she's not governessed a single child in all her life, and she's barely ten years older than I am. And yet still she never sits down during working hours, always assisting the maids and polishing the silverware, managing the work of ten people in one. She's shorter than Lucille, with long, flowing dark hair, and she always wears long, flowing kaftans in a stunning array of colours. Today, she's a vision of pastel pink and turquoise.

Lucille nods in my direction as she tosses cucumber slices in a pickling mixture. "Astor's sending a letter to a soldier."

"Ooh," Pauline says in excitement. "Who is he? Is he married?"

"I have no idea yet," I say. "I've no idea who it will even go to. Mother's organising a drive of letters and donations. Said I have to be involved." I pull a face.

"Took time out of your busy schedule riding horses and playing with dogs, did it?" Lucille reproaches me, ducking when I fling a tea towel in her direction.

"You know how I feel about my mother's philanthropic work," I say, mimicking her lofty voice. "It's all a farce. Full of so many unwritten rules and strange etiquettes. I simply cannot be bothered."

"Yes, and the problem is everyone knows you cannot be bothered," says Lucille. "You should tread more carefully. You've also made painfully clear your lack of desire to get married. If you aren't careful, you'll end up bitter and alone with no friends and no husband. Might as well morph into one of the dogs and live your life with them in the woods."

"I take great offence to that," I say. "My dogs would never spend their lives in the woods. They make terrible hunters. And thank goodness, because I have no taste for killing animals, and they insist on clinging to my feet everywhere I go. Gives me the best excuse not to partake, we'd only annoy everybody."

And it's true. All four dogs are in the kitchen as we speak — Bernice is sitting, tail wagging, waiting patiently for food scraps. Mopsie and Rudy play tug of war with the thick piece of rope they insist on lugging about everywhere they go, and Pip is lying down on his dog bed, releasing a dramatic sigh at his sibling's antics. I couldn't tell you the breed of any of them — I couldn't even tell you the mixture. They're all higgledy piggledy and decidedly imperfect, rescues from the shelter a few miles south. A rebellion against my parents' fascination with purebreds and show dogs.

"I think somebody's projecting," Pauline says, with a pointed glance at Lucille. "Lamenting your life's regrets?"

"Being a spinster suits my life perfectly," she says. "Always has. A husband and children, in these working conditions? Now I'm too old to qualify as anything but a cook, and too set in my ways to care. Astor has no such fortune. We all have a part to play in life." She addresses me directly. "I don't think it's fair, and I don't agree with it. But if you want to maintain a lifestyle of riding horses and feeding your dogs, you need to secure your future. You cannot run the farm alone. It will all fall into disrepute."

I know to what she is referring. So does Pauline, though they both have the grace not to mention the matter aloud. Generations of laziness and a taste for luxury have dwindled my inheritance to the most meagre of sums, dwindling more and more each day on the staff and maintenance of Sotheby. By the time my parents die and leave the estate to me, there'll be no estate left.

Not that I care.

But I do love the horses. And the equipment isn't getting any less costly. I've begun to establish a farm on the hundred of acres of grounds, and it's been an uphill battle the whole way — my parents worry such work will make us look desperate — but I know it can be a success.

But Lucille's right. I cannot do it alone.

"Maybe I will send him a picture," I relent, causing Lucille to laugh in victory. "And maybe we'll fall madly in love and he'll be devastatingly handsome and own horses and I'll never need to come back here again."

"I'll fetch the photo albums," says Pauline, bustling from the room.

We settle on a small cutting of a plain portrait taken just a few weeks ago. I slip it carefully into the envelope with the letter, and take extra care putting together a package of food supplies.

I feel strangely mournful once it's sent.

And yet also strangely hopeful.

A/n: credit to @iris222333  for the concept of writing letters during wartime, I love the idea and our chats <3