Chapter Text
Eva Smith was a strange one, born of a Mexican heiress and a gypsy on the run. She was born an aristocrat and yet seemingly content with a simple life in 71 Watery Lane.
Her maternal grandfather, Patrick Riley, had been kin to one of the men who deserted the American army in 1846 and was rewarded with a rich Mexican wife and a place in a president’s inner circle. Eva's father, Henry Smith, much later had stowed away on an ocean linear and met Isabel, the well-dowered and bold youngest daughter of Colonel Patricio Riley. By the time he reached Mexico, they were married and sharing her wealth. Harry had escaped every war after only for it to touch this fabled paradise with beautiful rich women and money and kill Harry and his wife in 1914.
After going missing for some years and resurfacing in Mexico City for a time, Eva was sent to her grandmother and uncle in England to avoid having her follow her family to the grave for treason, but if anyone asked, she was brought to take care of her senile grandmother.
She was stunning, with dark brown hair and equally dark eyes that looked into your soul as if she already knew you better than you knew yourself. One look at her and men were left spellbound by her.
Thomas Shelby believed himself to be the exception until he spied her from his window one morning and fell prey to the mystery beauty from the fabled paradise where it’s always summer that Harry Smith refused to return from.
Miss Smith was also one of the many beneficiaries of the Riley shipping company. A company that was still recuperating from crippling losses these past six years and had been smuggling everything from cheap whiskey to the finest champagne to the Americans without ever getting caught.
That was until Grace overheard something about a shipment they were to hide in stolen crates and was seen speaking on a telephone near the warehouse they were in.
Less than a day after her uncle showed up at the Garrison Pub to negotiate a refund for the job they failed to do ---with his bewitching niece in tow to offer a way out of paying the money-- he sees her walking down the street just as it began to rain.
“Your uncle should be careful with you, a pretty girl like you could get hurt in these parts.” He tells her as he pulls up beside her and she ponders whether she should get in the automobile or keep walking. A calculated move to see how far he’s willing to go to get her to join him in the car.
She was a nurse in her country’s revolution, and yet Polly had mentioned with great approbation how skilled she was at picking the lock to Grace’s flat and leaving it without a trace of them having ever been there.
“I would have had known if such a thing were to happen, Mr. Shelby.” Her English was almost entirely American, but the sort of American the wealthier ones speak with. Tommy found it grating in France and yet not coming from her lips.
Everything about her was designed to allure you, especially those fucking eyes that knew your secrets. “Besides, Polly has told you enough about me for you to think I am a defenseless lady seeking a knight in an unpaid suit.”
Miss Eva Smith was clairvoyant, something she’d gotten from her half-indigenous mother supposedly. She knew things other people didn’t and that helped her uncles smuggle things in and out of whatever ports they used.
“Hmm.” He had known she was a witch from the moment he saw her, he had witch’s blood from his own mother and blasted father running through his veins as well. “Still, it would be bad for business to let you walk home in the rain.”
Tommy wants her, he’s wanted her ever since their eyes met that first morning and the witch’s son felt the string of fate pull him out of the tunnels to the window she’d pass under.
She gives a polite smile that hides a wicked tongue and a spark of fire that threatens to burn those who dare to push too far. But the young heiress gets into the vehicle as if she owned it and he was merely a friend and not a man who could hurt her if he wished.
“Miss Burgess is the one who betrayed you to the police, but you know that already.” There is no hint of uncertainty in her voice, she taunts him with no fear because she knows Tommy doesn’t have it in him to kill let alone hurt a woman. “She was the one who told the police where the whiskey and other goods were, turned in Ada’s Freddie, and will even tell them about Black Star Day.”
He could kill her this second and yet she was here still alive, sitting in his car with her gloved hands folded neatly on top of her black skirt. Always wears black, some bullshit story about the President of Mexico forbidding her from mourning her rebel brothers and making up for lost time. Might be true or the young woman just likes the color black.
“What makes you think I will trust your word for it?” he looked at her wondering what was in it for and she remained calm with her all knowing smile, whatever she was in her war had given her nerves of steel and a mask to wear over the remains of the old her, whoever she had been.
“You won’t, but it doesn’t hurt to try and warn you about it. Besides I have no idea what Black Star Day is, but it must be important if she told her master about it.” She reaches for the door to leave, but he takes hold of her wrist. “Don’t worry I won’t tell anyone. Wouldn’t want people knowing the great Thomas Shelby was fucked over by the nosy barmaid.”
The rose finally revealed her thorns with a wicked smile. Miss Eva Smith was a lady through and through, but he can guess it was her tongue that got her exiled from her country. Lesser men never know how to appreciate a viper’s tongue on a beautiful woman.
“If you know so much, tell me how tomorrow will end.” He doesn’t ask, he demands.
“It’s not as if you believe me.” She looks out the window as if they were just two friends catching up with each other. “My name might as well be Cassandra of Troy.”
Tommy stopped believing in witchcraft in France, but he trusts Polly and if Polly says the girl is never wrong then he might consider putting her skills to good use.
“Maybe, I would believe you this time, I admit you were right about Grace, but anyone could have known that. She was not as good as a spy as they think.” He turns off the vehicle and offers her a cigarette which she refuses.
Eva scoffs, perhaps she had been a spy given how insulted she felt by Grace being one. They’ve never gotten along, her and the blonde. Grace could never get the dark-haired beauty to see her as anything but a nuisance and as phony as her accent or so Polly had told him.
“And yet you still want her, who would have thought a lying barmaid could have such a hold on you, Mr. Shelby?” Eva taunts him, daring to go there. A different person wouldn’t have, but the woman beside him was not anyone. “She was hired to seduce you, and you fell for her act because Campbell knew you were desperate for love.”
“I could kill you for that.” he warns, and she chuckles, brushing her pretty hair away from her face knowing it’s all a façade.
“You won’t, if you wanted me dead you could have killed me instead of offering me a smoke.” She gestures to his cigarette, still refusing to look at him. “I will tell you what I have seen about tomorrow, since you asked me so nicely. Three gunshots and two coffins, one is for Kimber.
Make sure you aren’t the second one, Shelby.”