Assassin's Creed Drabbles

↳london

In which Edward has everything he ever could have dreamed of and more. 

SHE MUST ONLY be nine or ten years old—dressed in a fine, blue frock near the color of her eyes and the right shade to make her red hair shine in the candlelight like burnished copper. A proper young lady, through and through. Or she would be if not for absconding to a quiet room away from the other party guests. The last dinner course had been served an hour ago, and now the men spoke business, and the ladies gossiped.

You stop at the door to your mother's parlor and see the girl make herself comfortable on the window bench overlooking the Watford Estate garden. "Hiding?" You muse. She jumps a little, her posture immediately straightening. "It's a good spot," you tell her, stepping into the sitting room—one you often stole away to as a girl yourself at these affairs and still do on occasion.

"Did they send you to find me?" The girl asks, skeptical and unsure as to why you're not scolding her for sneaking off or being somewhere she shouldn't.

"No," you answer. "I was looking for somewhere quieter myself." That surprises her. You seemed so at ease at the far end of the table, chatting with one of the dukes and his wife, smiling, and laughing when polite. It seemed second nature and effortless. She saw her father look at you more than a few times—he must have thought you were pretty or maybe that you'd be a good influence and example. "Jennifer, wasn't it?"

The girl nods and looks at the space beside her on the bench. "You can join me," Jennifer offers, moving over a bit.

Sitting next to her, you smooth your skirts and glimpse out the window too. A full moon hangs low and orange in the night sky; the clouds from an evening rain having lifted to reveal it. "Bad evening?" You ask.

Jennifer shakes her head. It wasn't bad, just overwhelming given how different things had been this last year. "Everyone keeps asking me questions." She counts them off on her fingers. "How old I am. Whether I like my tutors. Whether I dance. Whether I remember somebody's aunt and if I'm going to be a good young lady."

Very little has changed in society's circles after two decades. You smile, knowing you were very much of the same mindset when you were a girl—tired of the parade when a book or daydream beneath a beech tree in the afternoon sun is preferable. "Exhausting, isn't it?"

Her answer is a lengthy, dramatic sigh that fogs the windowpane nearest where she leans her head against the casing. Lanternlight along the drive and in the garden dance in the night. Those flickering little flames seem to be having more fun than everyone at the dinner party. "Do you like these parties?" She asks, spinning a little golden bracelet around her wrist.

"Not all the time," you admit. The first gathering of the season was always more pleasant than the fifth or even the twelfth—a poison in small doses, you decided some time ago, a necessary unpleasantry.

"Father doesn't really like them either," Jennifer tells you. Edward Kenway only accepted the invitation at the behest of Robert Walpole, the man responsible for his pardon—elsewise he's likely to have suffered the same fate as most accused of piracy. "He doesn't like very many people, though," Jenny adds. She's heard him curse most of the gentry under his breath and behind a closed door. You lift a brow, amused and endeared by how she speaks of him.

Shifting, you tuck a leg beneath you and lean toward the girl, as if to divulge a secret. "You know, you don't have to enjoy every party."

"Father says I should," she refutes, looking up at you with a frown.

"Does he?" She nods in response. "Perhaps you ought to tell him hiding in a quiet room is considerably more sensible than climbing out a window." You got a proper earful after sneaking out of Highclere Castle and wandering through the garden and park instead of entertaining Sir Robert Herbert's summer ball.