Page 97 of Ashes and Understanding
Colonel Fitzwilliam was elated. At last,hewould be the one to arrive first.
But someone betrayed them. He arrived too late. The house was ash and rubble, and everyone inside was slaughtered.
A single crow’s feather lay across the mouth of the young man, lying gutted next to his even younger wife—who was astonishinglynotwith child.
Desperately, Colonel Fitzwilliam followed the trail to the edge of the Spanish border, expecting at every moment to encounter the most gruesome of discoveries: a murdered infant.
But instead, he found her: Denisse.
She was barely standing. Her coat torn, her arms scraped from briars, her face hollow with fear and desperation. But she clutched the child like something sacred. When she learned Fitzwilliam was English, she wept—not with grief, but with hope.
She told him everything. The massacre. Her change of heart. Her flight. And the shadow behind her.
Even then, she knew who followed.
Le Corbeau.
Colonel Fitzwilliam brought them to London. Gave them a new name, a new home. He thought—hoped—it would be enough. She had provided details of the man who had incited their group to arms, details that he prayed would be enough to help him finally identify the man he had spent nearly a decade trying to outwit.
But then came the fire.
And when he arrived at the scorched edge of Cheapside, all that remained of Denisse was a body pulled from the street and a building burned to the ground.
The baby was gone.
And in the soot near what had once been the nursery, lying in the cradle, there was a black crow’s feather.
Le Corbeau had followed them to England and nearly burned down half of London, killing hundreds, all to finish his assignment: to eliminate the remaining line of Bourbon.
The message was clear:I am still ahead of you.
The colonel had scoured the city for weeks, tearing through records, bribing informants, risking exposure. But the trail had gone cold. He never found out who had taken the child—or if the child had even survived.
He returned to the Home Office with nothing but charred hands and a mind tormented by failure.
Until Darcy’s first letter came, and there was a mention of a girl who had rescued a baby during the fire.
An investigator was dispatched…and then murdered.
But his final words:Tell the raven it was the crow.
Le Corbeau—or, in English, The Crow—was in Hertfordshire.
The war had come to Meryton.
∞∞∞
Darcy sat frozen. He already knew some of what his cousin had shared, but not to this extent. He knew there was a foreign spy hunting the baby and that Smithson worked for the colonel and England.
But he had not known the full scale of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s service in name of king and country.
The things he has seen… what he has been through…
He could not speak—could barely breathe, though it had little to do with the persistent ache in his chest. The room, the fire, the faint ticking of the clock on the mantel—all seemed to fade to some distant hum. Across from him, Colonel Fitzwilliam leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, his voice still echoing in the space they shared.
Le Corbeau.
The Crow.
