Annie darted forward and grabbed a long stick from the underbrush. “Found mine!”
“Our tournament was last night,” Frederick reminded her. “I want to see how Papa and Désirée do.”
“Mademoiselle le Duc,” Jack corrected.
It was too late. Désirée was Désirée, and the twins were too busy tugging them out of the woods and toward the street to bother with social niceties.
“I hope you brought your handkerchief,” she warned Frederick. “I could trundle hoops in my sleep. Tears are going to fall when you see me utterly destroy your father.”
Annie squealed in delight. “I’m on Désirée’s team!”
“There’s noteams,” Frederick scolded her. “There’s two hoops. One against one.”
“Yes, but whenshewins, I win, too!”
“Thank you for the confidence,” Jack said. “I’ll have you know these aren’t my first hoops, either.”
“Oh?” Désirée’s keen gaze quickly assessed the two rings before she selected the best one. “Tell us. How old were you when you smelted your first trundling hoop in the boiling maw of the family forge?”
“Er…” Jack pantomimed loosening his cravat. “Can I be on her team, too?”
Frederick cried tears of laughter. “Too late! Too late!”
“Come one, come all, it’s a fight to the finish. And the finish is…” Annie pointed down the winding road. “First to the dairy’s fence wins!”
“Do you want my stick?” Frederick asked Désirée.
Jack’s jaw dropped open. “Isanyoneon my team?”
“On three,” Annie shouted in glee. “One…”
Désirée tossed Frederick’s stick to his father and scouted one of her own.
“Two…”
Jack positioned himself at the top of the hill.
Désirée strategically broke certain twigs from her branch and assumed her position on his other side.
“Three!”
Désirée raced down the side of the mountain. Subtle adjustments of her stick kept her well-balanced iron hoop smooth and upright with practiced dexterity.
Jack’s slightly uneven hoop pitched this way and that at every dip or pebble, forcing him to parry and feint as though he were not trundling hoops but fencing aboard a pirate ship.
Désirée immediately slowed and twisted about to jog backward, not rushing ahead to put paid to the race, but instead making an exaggerated show of staying precisely one step ahead.
The children crowed with laughter.
“That’s it,” Jack growled. “I’m going to—”
But whatever he was going to do did not get done, because his hoop chose that exact moment to exert its independence from both Jack and his stick.
“Désirée!” Frederick cried. “Quick, do ale duc!”
He wanted a ‘remède?’ She would show him one of her favorites.
Before Jack could rescue his hoop, Désirée swung her arm in a half circle, catching the runaway iron ring with the opposite side of her stick. Now her branch trundled both; a two-foot long oak axle with unhinged wheels.
