The blind man’s buff had been her idea; a convenient ruse to escape into the maze with him. He had indulged her, as he always did. Anne had first stolen into his bed at the age of eighteen, and with each passing year, each visit to Rosings, her hunger only grew. By careful means, he contrived to keep the affair secret and spare them any untimely consequences.
He found a wicked delight in gratifying her while certain that Lady Catherine would have raged had she guessed the truth. Until Anne had whispered her foolishness about marriage.
“Your mother would never allow it,” he had said, dismissing the idea with a simple wave of his hand.
His first mistake. Anne did not want to wait until she was five-and-twenty and no longer under her mother’s rule. She never wanted to wait. And that precise night, she had taken matters into her own hands.
Fitzwilliam had been too deep into his third glass of port to fully register the sound of his door opening. He barely took notice when Anne climbed into his bed.
She had been wild that night, fiercer than before. When they were done, he laughed in breathless pleasure.
“Oh, my, Anne,” he said lazily. “What has got into you?”
Then he lit the candle and the blood rushed from his face. Her nightgown. The fabric was soaked in blood.
His heart pounded. The port blurred his reasoning, but not enough to ignore what this meant.
“Anne,” he whispered. “What did you do?”
“We are free, Richard.” Her voice was dreamy, her smile manic. “We are finally free.”
His mind was slow to process. But when it did, it landed on one undeniable truth.
This could work in his favour—if he acted fast enough.
***
As the saying goes, a single spark can start a fire, and Fitzwilliam had lit too many to stop everything from going up in flames.
From that moment on, every decision he made was the wrong one, each mistake pulling him deeper into the web of lies and deceit he had spun. The more he struggled, the tighter it trapped him.
His second big mistake came the following night. He had been in Anne’s room, discussing how they would handle Lady Catherine’s death when Mrs. Jenkinson walked in carrying a tray of tea, and caught them together.
Anne reacted violently, seizing the poker. Fitzwilliam had barely caught her hand before she could bring it down on her companion. The poor woman fled. Anne urged him to stop her. Thus, he ran after her, already scheming how to convince her of their innocence.
The rest happened so quickly he could not recall the exact moment of decision. He chased her into the tower. Grabbed her arm. She fought, struggled. But what chance did she have, a frail old woman against a man twice her size?
Eyes wide with terror, she screamed—desperate cries that no one would hear.
He held her firmly while she tugged with all her strength to free herself from his grip.
Then, he let go.
It had not been a moment of rage. Not even a conscious plan. Just a choice made in the space of a heartbeat.
Mrs. Jenkinson tumbled backward, disappearing into the dark stairwell.
That was the night Colonel Fitzwilliam killed an old, defenceless woman.
Thinking quickly, he had fetched the tray she had carried and cast it down the stairwell after her. A poor imitation of an accident—but it had worked, for a time. Darcy, of course, had noticed the missing pieces. His cousin’s insight had bought the fool just enough time to mend the scene before the constable arrived.
From that night on, Anne’s behaviour began to unravel. Her moods turned erratic, her actions increasingly volatile—particularly when he announced his intention to leave the island. She had grown so agitated that he tried to calm her as he always had—as she liked—but even a night of indulgence failed to soothe her. So he resorted to laudanum.
To his misfortune, that had only made things worse. Whatever its effect, it unmoored her so completely that the night ended with Collins dead—and Rosings engulfed in flames.
A bell rang in the distance, carried by the wind. Fitzwilliam sighed, annoyed. Damn that woman and her habit of announcing to the entire village that she required his presence.
With a weary roll of his shoulders, he began the slow ride back to the house.
