"Excellent! Alexandra will join you."
Alexandra blinked, a flash of mild panic flickering through her chest before she tamped it down firmly. "I will not."
"You shall," Genny said with an alarming degree of certainty. "You owe me."
"For what?” Alexandra asked.
"For dragging you out of your lair,” she said.
Alexandra sighed, casting a glance toward the heavens, a mixture of exasperation and reluctant affection bubbling inside her chest. "You are the devil." Secretly, though she'd never admit it aloud, she appreciated Genny's relentless meddling—life would be unbearably dull without it.
"With impeccable taste in sport.”
Alexandra grudgingly admitted to herself that Genny was right—though she'd rather bite her tongue than give her friend the satisfaction.
Lady Hattie Sutton, Alexandra's no-nonsense friend with a perpetually arched brow and a fondness for tart lemon cakes, had just arrived with a lemonade in hand. She overheard and inserted herself into the exchange with a dry smile.
"Langley playing lawn bowls? I must place a bet."
"Against me?" he asked, mock wounded.
“Naturally." She took a sip of her lemonade.
Lord Arthur Cavendish, who had the soul of a poet and the timing of a buffoon, chose that moment to sigh and proclaim, "This is precisely how love stories begin. On grassy lawns. Amidst ridiculous games."
Alexandra rolled her eyes. "If you break into verse, I shall steal your walking stick and use it as a javelin." She struggled to keep the amusement from her voice—despite her outward annoyance, there was something endearing about Arthur’s unwavering romanticism.
Arthur gasped and clutched his chest as if mortally wounded. "Then let it be a noble death—struck down by poetry and passion!"
* * *
The match began with far too many people gathered to spectate what was, essentially, a game of rolling balls toward a smaller ball and pretending it was riveting. Alexandra mused that the only thing more absurd than the game itself was the level of competitive fervor it inspired among the ton.
But with Alexandra and the Earl of Langley involved, the game quickly became more than mere recreation.
It became war.
"You did that on purpose," Alexandra accused after Langley's third toss rolled precisely to the jack.
He spread his arms innocently. "I can’t help being naturally gifted."
"Naturally arrogant, more like."
Her turn. She stepped forward, skirts swishing, narrowed her eyes, and tossed.
The ball veered left.
"Drat."
Magnus clucked his tongue. "Tragic."
"Remind me why we’re doing this?” She asked.
"Because you agreed."
"I was tricked."
"And yet here you are, fiercely determined to best me."
