father, who sat between Mr. Ellice and Lady Theo.
And whatever Bert, Bart, and Clart did, their wives copied. In this case, they showed their disapproval of Lady Theo through catty remarks. “So pretentious,” Bart’s wife whispered in a voice that could scratch glass.
“I’d never wear silk during the daytime,” Bert’s spouse pronounced. “But then, of course, who am I to dictate fashion? I’m just a lowly woman from the colonies.”
Exactly, thought Sophie, while her two female nieces tittered. You do not know fashion and you’d never wear jacquard silk anywhere. What’s more, no one with any sense would ask you anywhere because all you ever do is criticize and complain.
“And, of course,” her sister-in-law continued, “I’m sure dear Sophie could tell us the right thing to wear if she wasn’t chasing boys or climbing mountains when she should have been getting ready to greet her papa’s special guest.”
Sophie stared at her nephews and nieces. Eleven-year-old Elias wore a smug, gloating look on his face, and she realized that he must have told the household about her morning’s adventure. Elias was like that. He tiptoed about in his self-important way and somehow seemed to be everywhere. He never got into trouble himself. No one ever questioned why he knew so much or why he felt the need to tell on people. “I feel it’s my duty…” he’d start. Or he’d say, “I think you should know…” and the next thing Sophie would feel would be the housekeeper’s birch on her behind.
She knew it was wrong, but she really disliked her family at times. Except for Papa, of course. For some reason, Bert always watched her, especially when he thought she wasn’t looking, and she hated Bart’s smile. What he had to smile about all the time, Sophie didn’t know. It bothered her. Occasionally, though, Clart was kind. He hadn’t married, so maybe that was the reason. But somehow Bert and Bart’s wives always seemed to find fault with her and their children hated her — or, at least, the ones that were about her own age did. Daniel and his sister Eliza were a little older than she was; Bart’s eleven-year-old twins Elias and Emily were a tad younger.
Sophie wasn’t sure when the trouble between them had started. She’d been in England for the past three years, and while she couldn’t remember ever liking them before, she couldn’t recall being the target of their nastiness, either. She’d known the ABCs hadn’t wanted her papa to go. There had been so many, many arguments before they’d left for London because her brothers thought Papa had forgotten the family’s traditions.
But the job had been so important for England that the Governor himself came to Malloryville to beg Sophie’s papa to become Vermont’s economic commissioner. As Vermont’s leading businessman, he argued, Benjamin Mallory was the only person who could represent the state’s financial interests. Bert, Bart, and Clart had disagreed, of course, and so had her grandpapa before he died. Mallorys are foes of England, Grandpapa had thundered. Mallorys do not associate with their enemies. He certainly hadn’t, and Sophie could well imagine his paroxysm of rage if he knew that Mr. Ellice and Lady Theo were sitting in the Green Drawing Room on the very sofa he had bought when President Andrew Jackson had visited Malloryville.
Grandpapa had good reasons to loathe the British. Born and brought up in Boston, as a teenager he’d been part of a group that had tarred and feathered Jonathan Sewall in 1770 when he was Attorney-General of Massachusetts. His mask had slipped in the melee that followed, and while he hadn’t actually done the tarring and feathering himself, he’d been the only one recognized. The government immediately offered a reward for his capture. Sophie had actually seen one of the old posters with its scary wording: “Samuel Mallory. Wanted. Dead or Alive.”
With a price on his head, Samuel ran away to Vermont’s Green Mountains and fought against the British for the rest of his life. In the long term, leaving Massachusetts had been good for him. He built up his own businesses and eventually become the second richest man in the entire state of Vermont. His son Benjamin, Sophie’s papa, had followed in Samuel’s footsteps by fighting in the War of 1812 at the Battle of Châteauguay, and Samuel primed his grandsons to fight whatever battles needed to be fought in the future. It seemed to Sophie, as she looked around, that one was being fought in front of her in the Green Drawing Room.
“Impossible,” Bert sputtered to his father. “I don’t care how long you’ve been in England. Grandpapa was right. The British are our enemies. You can’t go into Lower Canada for a party in Beauharnois. Do I have to remind you? It’s near Châteauguay? Near the battlefield of 1813? Where you fought the British?” When he finished this staccato series of questions, he looked at his father with exasperation. “That’s why you can’t go there, much less take my sister with you.”
At this, Sophie’s ears pricked up. In her daydreaming, she hadn’t realized she was part of the argument.
“Bert,” her papa answered slowly. “We’ve talked about this before —”
“And in any case,” Mr. Ellice interrupted in his high-pitched British accent, “you have nothing to worry about. No one carries grudges for more than twenty years.”
Sophie’s three brothers stared at Mr. Ellice in astonishment and she could almost see their outrage. First, that he should dare intervene in this family quarrel, and second, that he should imagine that people forgot grudges. With the Mallorys, grudges lasted forever; when Bart started to explain this, Sophie saw Bert clamp a warning hand on his knee.
“Even if Papa should go, I don’t think Sophie should leave her studies for something as frivolous as a Welcome to Winter party, sir,” he intervened smoothly, showing his teeth in what Sophie thought resembled a crocodile’s grin. Since when was Bert responsible for her schoolwork? She looked at Lady Theo, wondering what she’d missed. The Ellices had invited her to a Welcome to Winter party?
Others, apparently, had the same question.
“A Welcome to Winter party,” Bert’s wife tittered. “Really. The things that are fashionable in London these days. One hears of them, of course. But Benjamin, go if you must. I’m sure you’d enjoy the time alone with your charming fiancée. Dear Sophie will stay with us, of course.”
“Dear” Sophie looked again at Lady Theo, her heart in her eyes, silently begging her to object. But Lady Theo didn’t look in her direction. “You’re so kind. So considerate,” she answered. “I worried about the disruption.”
While Sophie seethed at the injustice and insincerity of it all, everyone else smiled. It looked like peace had come again to the Mallory household now that these arrangements were definite. Benjamin and Lady Theo would go to Beauharnois, the seigneury or estate owned by the Ellices, in a week for the Welcome to Winter party. During their visit to Lower Canada, Sophie would stay in Bert’s house and be looked after by his wife.
Everyone, except Sophie, seemed happy. Bert and his wife had crocodile smiles firmly in place. Bart and his wife also smiled widely. Sophie wondered how her papa and Lady Theo couldn’t see that their acquiescence was false. There was something else going on, although she had no idea what it was. But it seemed obvious, once she looked behind the false smiles, that Bert and Bart were actually quite content with the arrangement despite the arguments they had made against it.
And if Bert and Bart were content, their children were ecstatically happy. Once her father left, Sophie would be defenceless and at the mercy of Daniel, Eliza, and the twins, Elias and Emily. Particularly Elias.
CHAPTER TWO
Despite Sophie’s apprehensions, the next few days were happy. In
