✓ | GOLDEN LIAR ↠ Thomas Shelby.

07.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

               FELICITY WASN'T ANGRY: NOT as far as she could tell.

All the woman felt was a forever-growing sense of numbness that was beginning to take over each and every part of her body. She was not angry with her father, she was not angry with Thomas Shelby, and she was surprised to say that she was not even angry with herself.

What she was, though, was disappointed.

Disappointment was, as Felicity Woods found, a hard emotion to shake herself free of and it was one that she wished would just go away as quickly as possible so that she could return to her normal, naive state of being that she preferred much more. She was tired of hoping for the best and wishing, pleading with the universe that everything would turn out alright. She was tired of trying, tired of failing, tired of continually getting her dreams shattered or her hopes tossed away as though they were worth nothing.

The girl woke up on the Saturday morning with one thought on her mind: to get as far away from the Garrison for the day as she possibly could.

Or rather: to hide somewhere that Thomas Shelby would have no chance of finding her, because she was not in the mood for his hostility that would no doubt appear as he childishly placed the blame on her instead of on himself. . .

. . . perhaps Felicity was being too harsh on him, but after the events of Cheltenham Races, she was not in the mood to be any nicer.

So Felicity reluctantly shrugged her arms into a coat and trudged down Watery Lane, snaking through the streets until she came to the door of the Church. The girl curled her fingers around the handle, hoped that no one would be accompanying her, and slipped inside.

Felicity Woods' logic was that Thomas Shelby hardly seemed to be of the religious sort. . . and besides, she noticed how although most men who went to war were most likely religious, many came back with the shared sense that when it came to the early autumn of 1914. She had never seen Thomas Shelby step foot inside the nearby Catholic Church of Small Heath and so that was why she slipped through the thick oaken doors with confidence in the fact that at least she would not have to deal with him for the time being.

The girl remembered the fact that she was supposed to make the sign of a cross when she stepped into the church and so she did so quickly. Felicity walked swiftly through the church in silence, her footsteps echoing off the floor's stone slabs as she did so. As she came towards the front, she slid into the second pew along.

Felicity hardly remembered how to pray and so she wasn't sure what else she could do, so she just allowed her thoughts to run throughout her being. All she wanted to do was sleep, in all fairness, but she knew that if she had stayed at home she would have been even more bored than she was now and so Felicity would have just ended up going to the Garrison. . . to which she was at risk of running into either one of the Shelby brothers.

And so Felicity closed her eyes and hoped - rather than prayed - for the day to pass by quickly.

However, when the door creaked open, Felicity Woods' eyes flew open.

"I didn't expect to see the Woods girl here," a woman's voice mused.

The blonde didn't look up from her clasped-together hands and instead waited for Polly Gray to take a seat before she moved her gaze even a millimetre towards the woman.