Free Assassin's Creed: Unity by Oliver Bowden Page A

has been given the task of
beating
some sense into you.”
    I thought to myself,
An emissary? My father was sending an emissary. He wasn’t even coming himself, he was sending an emissary.
Perhaps he planned to isolate me, I thought, suddenly realizing how horrific I found the idea. My father, one of only three people in the world I truly loved and trusted, simply shutting me out. I’d been wrong. There was another circle of hell into which I could be cast.
    Madame Levene gloated. “Yes. It appears that your father is too busy to attend to this matter himself. He must send an emissary in his place. Perhaps, Élise, you are not as important to him as you might imagine.”
    I looked hard at the gloating face of the headmistress and for a brief second imagined myself diving across the desk and wiping the smirk off her face myself, but I was already fomenting other plans.
    “The emissary wishes to see you alone,” she said.
    “I expect you shall listen outside the door.”
    Her lips thinned. Those stony eyes glittered. “I will enjoy knowing that your impertinence has come with a price, Mademoiselle de la Serre, you can be sure of that.”

21 J ANUARY 1788
    And so the day came when the emissary was due to arrive. I had stayed out of trouble the week prior to his arrival. According to the other girls I was quieter than usual. Some were asking when the “old Élise” would return; the usual suspects were crowing that I had finally been tamed. We’d see.
    Actually, what I was doing was readying myself, mentally and physically. The emissary would be expecting meek acquiescence. He would be expecting a frightened teenager, terrified of expulsion and happy to take any other punishment. The emissary was expecting tears and contrition. He wasn’t going to get that.
    I was summoned to the office, told to wait, and wait I did. With my hands grasping my purse in which I had secreted a horseshoe “borrowed” from above the dormitory door. It had never brought me any luck. Now was its chance.
    From the vestibule outside I heard two voices, Madame Levene with her obsequious, ingratiating welcome to Father’s emissary, telling him that “the miscreant awaits her just deserts in my office, monsieur,” and then the deeper, growling voice of the emissary as he replied, “Thank you, Madame.”
    With a gasp I recognized the voice, and still had my hand to my mouth in shock as the door opened and in came Mr. Weatherall.
    He closed the door behind him and I threw myself at him, knocking the breath out of him with the force of my emotion, shoulders wracked with sobs that came before I had a chance to stop them. My shoulders heaved as I wept into his chest and I tell you this—I’ve never ever been as pleased see anyone in my life as I was at that moment.
    We stayed like that for some time, with me silently sobbing into my protector until at last I was able to gain control of myself and he held me at arm’s length to gaze into my eyes, then, first putting his finger to his lips and moving in front of the keyhole.
    Over his shoulder he said loudly, “You may well cry, mademoiselle, for your father is too furious with you to attend to the matter himself. So full of emotion that he has asked me, your governor”—he winked—“to administer your punishment in his place. But first, you shall write to him a letter of abject apology. And when that is done I shall administer your punishment, which you may expect to be the most severe you have ever experienced.”
    He ushered me to a school desk in one corner of the office, out of view from the keyhole, where I perched with writing paper, quill and pen just in case the headmistress should find an excuse to walk in on us. Then he pulled up a chair, put his elbows to the surface of the desk and, whispering, we began to talk.
    “I’m pleased to see you,” I told him.
    He chortled softly. “Can’t say I’m surprised. After all, you were expecting to have seven shades of shit knocked out