you should know first. After all, he’s your pony.”
“Thanks. Maybe it’s just a stone in his shoe.”
To Sophie’s surprise, the twins led her to the old box room behind the stables, and when she opened the door, she found not Pegasus but Daniel and Eliza waiting for her.
She turned to Emily with fury and betrayal in her eyes. “You didn’t care about Pegasus at all. This is just a trap.”
“Which you stupidly fell into,” Elias gloated.
Sophie couldn’t say anything. She had been stupid. She’d allowed her love for Pegasus to overcome her caution. Usually she would not have trusted the twins to lead her anywhere, but Elias, as usual, had found her weakness.
“Doesn’t it bother you, being so stupid?” he went on.
Again Sophie kept quiet. There was no point in saying anything. Elias and Daniel stood between her and the door, and Eliza and Emily stood to either side. She had no chance of getting away.
As usual, Elias started the attack. “You’re so stupid you don’t even know how stupid you really are. All we had to tell you was that there was something wrong with Pegasus and you didn’t stop to think. You rushed out of the house without even bothering to put on a coat. You’re just like Uncle Benjamin. You don’t think.”
“Papa says Uncle Benjamin’s going to bankrupt us all if he keeps running the mills the way he does,” Daniel said. “Papa says that these new ideas of his don’t make sense. You can’t replace men with machines, so why does he want to invest in a railroad?”
Sophie thought about telling them of the steam mills and other things she’d seen in England, but before she could say a word, Eliza grabbed her arm and pinched it. “And my mama says it’s all because of that fancy-piece he’s brought back with him, that Lady Theodosia,” she sniffed. “Mama says it should be Lady Whoreodosia.”
Sophie saw red. “If anyone’s a whore, it’s your mother,” she shouted. “She didn’t have a cent to her name when she married Bert. I can remember Mrs. Bates telling someone that when I was little.”
Elias, for once, stopped being an onlooker. Sophie had hardly finished the words when he grabbed her arms. “Go on, Daniel,” he said, his face flushed with anger. “I’ll hold her. Teach her to shut her mouth. No one should be able to say things like that about your mama and get away with it.”
Daniel needed no more encouragement. He slapped Sophie’s cheek and then punched her in the mouth. As Sophie tried to cover her face, Elias grabbed one arm and Emily the other. “Do it again, Daniel,” they shouted. “Hit her!”
As the girls shrieked and Daniel cocked his fist, a dark figure flew down from the rafters.
“It’s easy to beat a girl up when it’s four against one,” the boy from the mountain said as he kicked Elias where it hurt the most and then sneered at Elias’s suddenly white face. “So that’s how you fight, is it? By holding onto a girl’s arm? Let’s see how you like it when it’s four against two.”
CHAPTER THREE
As Elias doubled over in agony, Sophie pulled herself out of Emily’s grasp and pushed her down into a heap on the straw beside her brother. Eliza pulled her hair, jerking Sophie’s head back. “You can’t call my mother a whore, Miss High and Mighty. Miss British lover,” she yelled, pummelling whatever part of Sophie she could reach with her fists.
“Then you shouldn’t have said what you did about Lady Theo,” Sophie shouted back, pulling herself free.
“And you shouldn’t have interfered,” Daniel snarled at the boy as he punched him in the jaw.
While Elias moaned and groaned on the floor, the five others entered into a furious fray with fists flying. Sometimes they connected with unlikely targets, as when Daniel hit his sister right in the eye. After a while everyone got tired and the savagery diminished. Everything might have settled into a resumption of the cold war that had existed previously if Elias hadn’t found an old broomstick and tried to hit the boy with it.
Sophie saw him at the last moment. “Look out! Behind you!” she shouted, struggling to free herself from Emily and Eliza’s grasp.
The boy dodged so that Elias only hit him on the arm, but the blow was enough to make him go white and fall to his knees. Sophie saw Elias raise the stick again, and she screamed for help as loudly as she could before charging toward Elias, taking Emily and Eliza with her. Willy-nilly they barrelled into him, their combined weight pushing him and them to the floor.
Sophie managed to pin herself across the arm holding the stick. Elias kicked and tried to buck her off. She refused to move.
Daniel, the only one standing, came to his cousin’s rescue. Unceremoniously he pulled Sophie away and flung her across the room. “I’ll look after you later,” he snarled and headed back toward the boy.
Sophie screamed again — then prayed with all her might — and it seemed that God or her guardian angel was listening, because the door to the box room opened almost immediately and Lady Theo strode in.
She took one look at the suddenly silent mass of children, raised an eyebrow, and asked, in cool tones, “Now who will tell me the meaning of this?”
As usual, Elias took it upon himself to be the spokesman. “Lady Theo, she started it,” he began, stumbling to his feet and pointing to Sophie.
“Be quiet,” Lady Theo ordered peremptorily. “First of all, young man, my name is Lady Thornleigh. And her name isn’t she. It’s Sophie, as I’m sure you know. Now, if you want to continue, I’ll trust you’ll not embarrass your mother any further by displaying your deplorable lack of manners.”
Elias blushed and retreated into a sulky silence. Lady Theo turned to the group again. “I’m still waiting for an explanation,” she said icily. “Which one of you wants to give it to me?”
The boy, still ashen-faced and clearly in pain, pushed himself up from the floor. “I don’t know how it started exactly, Lady Thornleigh. It seems to be an old quarrel. But today these four,” he broke off for a moment, searching for the right word to continue in his slightly accented voice. “These four lured Miss Sophie into the room here and picked an argument with her.”
Lady Theo turned to Sophie. “Is this true? You allowed yourself to get into an argument?”
Sophie nodded. Her scalp hurt from all the hair pulling and her heart almost broke at what she thought was disgust in Lady Theo’s eyes. To her surprise, the boy came to her rescue again. “She didn’t have much choice, milady. Not after they called you a whore.”
Everyone went still. Lady Theo let the silence play out for several moments, and then turned to Elias, her aristocratic face showing her disdain. “You seemed eager to talk before, young man. Tell me, is this true?”
Elias looked to his twin, his cousins, and finally to Sophie. No one offered help. Scuffing his boots on the floor, he nodded. Just once. A quick jerk of the head and that was all.
Then his innate weaselly nature kicked in and he couldn’t leave well enough alone. “But I wasn’t the one who said it, Lady Thornleigh.”
