The Glory Game (2 page)

She passed on the information with the degree of vagueness with which she usually regarded the inner workings of the law firm Thomas, Thorndyke & Wall—except when she was expected to entertain a client. If clients were that important, she usually knew them or their family. She was intelligent, but she was by no means a “brain.” She had her bachelor's degree in
liberal arts from the University of Virginia, but she knew she had passed by the skin of her teeth. One of the requisites she had sought in a husband was that he had to be smarter than she was. Drew was.

“… and now for the opposing team, it seems fitting somehow that one of the teams competing for the Jacob Kincaid Memorial Cup in this finals match should be Jake's old team, the Blue Chips. And keeping the Kincaid polo-playing tradition alive is his grandson, Rob Kincaid Thomas, playing the Number One position.”

Applause sounded through the stands, but the cheering came from the Kincaid box, and Luz was loudest of them all as he cantered the steel-gray forward when his name was called. The crowd's reaction nearly drowned out the rest of the announcer's words.

“… riding the gray gelding that's familiar to a lot of you, Jake Kincaid's top mount, Stonewall. Watch this boy. He's only nineteen and already has a two-goal handicap.”

Audra pursed her lips in a subtle gesture of disapproval that Luz remembered well from childhood. “He should have saved the gray for the last chukkar. Jake always did.”

“I suggested the gray to lead off the match,” Luz stated, the smile freezing on her lips while she continued to applaud for her son. “That gray horse is as steady as his name. He'll settle Rob's nerves and get him into the rhythm of the game.”

“We'll see.” Which meant “I know better.”

“Besides, by the time they start the sixth chukkar, the gray will be rested enough for Rob to ride him again if he has to.” Even though confident of her own judgment, Luz was annoyed by this need to convince Audra she was right, an obvious remnant of their former parent/child relationship.

Her sister, Mary Kincaid Carpenter, older than Luz by two years, leaned forward to remark to both, “You can sure tell which team is the favorite. Listen to the way they're clapping for our side.”

Luz nodded, then turned her head slightly without taking her eyes off the field, where the riders were squaring off. “If you'd ever get all your children together in one place and on horseback, we could have a whole league of our own.”

It was a family joke; she and her stockbroker husband had twelve children. An even dozen and no more, Mary had often
said after the birth of the last, quick to add she had married a Carpenter, not a baker. Only three were still living at home; the rest were at prep school, college, married, or on their own.

Just keeping track of where they all were was a feat in itself, and a family gathering could turn into a logistical nightmare. Luz often marveled at her older sister's ability to juggle everything and still find time to attend functions like this and cheer her nephews or nieces. Of course this was a special occasion, a tribute to their father as well.

Mary had inherited his larger bone structure. Never pretty, she was a handsome woman, like their mother, and the pace of a big family kept her slender, in spite of birthing twelve children. Without a doubt, Luz was closer to Mary than she was to their oldest brother, Frank, or the baby of the family, Michael. Happiness radiated from within Mary; that's where her beauty lay. Sometimes Luz envied her that.

“Don't wish polo ponies on me, Luz. We already have three horses, two Shetlands, four dogs, and I don't know how many cats. I don't mind the children's leaving home, but I wish they'd take their pets with them instead of letting me look after them,” Mary stated with little genuine complaint. She leaned back as a mounted umpire, one of two on the field, rode to his position for the throw-in to start the game.

Viewed from the sidelines, the beginning of a polo match always seemed a scene of confusion. The eight players, four riders on each team, were clustered on their respective sides of midfield, more or less angled to face the umpire, depending on the nervous prancing of their horses and the individual jockeying for no apparent advantage over another. Into this narrow gauntlet between opposing teams of horses and riders, the umpire tossed a white ball measuring the regulation three and one-quarter inches in diameter. Luz lost sight of it almost immediately amid the legs of horses with their colorful protective sandowns bandages and the hooking sticks going for the ball. She didn't see the actual hit that knocked it free of the tangle, just the white ball bouncing down the center of the field toward the opponent's goal.

Horses and riders shot after it. A black-shirted player had the angle on the ball, and his forward teammate spurred his horse toward the posts, breaking away from the slower-reacting blue defensive back. Racing hooves drummed the ground as
Luz watched the near-perfect form of the black rider's swing and silently hoped the mallet would miss the ball. It didn't.

The ball sailed in a long, lobbing pass, landing sixty yards downfield in perfect position for the free-running Black Oak forward to knock it between the goalposts. The first chukkar was less than a minute old and already the score was Black Oak one, Blue Chips zero.

Mary gave Luz a consoling pat on the shoulder. “That was just luck. Wait until our guys get going.”

But the announcer had a different opinion. “Martin gets the score for Black Oak after a brilliant pass by Raul Buchanan. Plays like that are what earned that Argentine his nine-goal handicap. Looks like the Blue Chip players are going to have their hands full this afternoon.”

Her glance picked out the black-shirted professional, riding his horse back to midfield for the throw-in that followed a score. The white numeral 3 on his back referred to the position he played on the team, a defensive back and play maker, usually given to the team captain and most skilled member of the group.

Polo teams were almost always a mixture of amateur and professional riders, with certain exceptions, but the enlistment of this Argentine star's services indicated how badly Chester Martin, sponsor of and player on the Black Oak team, wanted to win.

A high-goal polo player had to be an expert horseman, and from Luz's own riding experience she knew this man was one. At any given moment, he knew without looking which hoof was on the ground and which was lifting, where the horse's center of balance was, and what its attitude was. He could sense it and feel it through his legs and the reins.

At this distance, there was little Luz could discern about the man himself except that he had a rider's trimly muscled build, narrow-hipped and wide-shouldered. The white polo helmet and faceguard increased the difficulty in distinguishing any features, but now that Luz had sized up the main opposition, her attention shifted to her son as he rode up to the midline bisecting the three-hundred-yard-long field.

The quick score against his team appeared to have eliminated the anxious jitters Rob usually suffered in the early minutes of a game; he looked settled and calm, ready for serious play. Luz smiled faintly, pleased with his developing maturity. He
was outgrowing those abrupt mood swings from high to low and back again that had marked his early teens.

“There's Drew coming now.” At her mother's announcement Luz turned, hearing an unspoken reminder that Audra had warned he would miss the start of the game.

As far as Audra Kincaid was concerned, good manners dictated punctuality, and there was no excuse for tardiness. Luz could remember the raging argument she'd had with her mother when she was seventeen and wanted to arrive fashionably late to a party. On reflection, Luz realized that it hadn't quite been a raging argument; she had raged, but her mother had never raised her voice, and the argument had been lost. The lesson had been learned well, Luz realized, because she was rarely late for any appointment now.

And Drew was rarely on time, which was a constant source of annoyance to her. As he approached the box, she could see there wasn't a glimmer of regret that he had missed the opening play of the match even though he knew how important this game was to Rob.

Smothering that flash of resentment, Luz reminded herself of his good qualities as a provider, father, and husband. He was still an attractive man, distinguished with those silver tufts in his dark hair, proud of the way he'd kept his shape by playing a lot of tennis and golf instead of turning into the round butterball Mary's husband had become.

His thriving law career took a lot of his time, and even when they did spend time together, they didn't talk much, but after being married for nearly twenty-one years, they knew just about everything there was to know about each other, so what was there to discuss? Politics? The weather? The children? A recap of the day's happenings? Luz didn't mind the silences. She supposed they were what writers described as “comfortable” ones.

“I see his guests finally arrived.” Audra's observation prompted Luz to glance at the couple following Drew to the box. Her first glimpse of the woman startled Luz. This strikingly lovely brunette with her curious eyes and laughing smile did not fit the mental picture Luz had of a female lawyer, with a prim mouth and black-rimmed glasses. Drew had failed to mention how beautiful she was. Surely in the month she'd been with the firm he had noticed that little detail.

Immediately, Luz detected the catty tone of her thoughts and suppressed it. She wasn't going to play the role of a jealous wife just because her husband had hired some pretty young thing to work in his office. She had her suspicions that Drew had stepped out on her in the past. They'd only been one-night stands. Every man she knew indulged in those, given the opportunity. But Drew had never kept a mistress, she was sure of that.

“I remember that Eberly boy now,” Audra murmured to Luz. “He's the bachelor that gave Mary's Barbara such a rush last fall.”

“Yes.” Luz couldn't ignore the relief she felt when she finally noticed the handsome junior partner in the law firm. Tall and dark, definitely Harvard, he could have been a Madison Avenue model for a rising young attorney.

As the three late arrivals entered the ringed enclosure, the polo match resumed play. Courtesy dictated that Luz ignore the action on the field in order to meet Drew's guests. Drew offered an excuse about traffic for their tardiness, for Audra's benefit.

“I hope we didn't miss much,” the brunette said, smiling. She was very poised yet disarmingly open and friendly.

“The game has barely started,” Luz assured her graciously.

Drew took over the formal introductions. “Audra, I'd like you to meet the newest member of my staff, Miss Claudia Baines. This is Audra Kincaid.”

“It is a privilege to meet you, Mrs. Kincaid.” Claudia Baines extended a hand in greeting, not showing any awe of the Kincaid dowager. Luz wondered if she knew how closely she was being inspected, her scarlet-and-white slack suit judged as to line and fit, the soft cut of her dark hair examined for faddish extreme. The appraisal points were numerous, but all reviewed in the sweep of an eye.

“And, of course, you remember Phil Eberly from the firm.” Drew stepped aside to allow room for the young lawyer to present himself to Audra Kincaid.

“Yes, we've met before.” And her comment to Luz had been that the young man was “too full of himself.”

That had been her opinion of Drew twenty-two years ago. At the time, the Bridgeport Thomases were an old and socially acceptable family with little money and a lot of hubris.
Determined to make it on his own, he had refused Jake Kincaid's offer to work in the legal department of his investment banking company. Over the years, Luz had often wondered if Drew ever guessed how many of his high-paying clients in those earlier years had been referred to him by Jake Kincaid. Not that they had ever struggled, since she had her own money, her own inheritance from her grandfather—and even more now that Jake was gone.

Then it was her turn to meet Claudia Baines. The sparkling zest in those wide hazel eyes made it easy for Luz to smile back at her. She reminded Luz of her daughter; that youthful optimism was contagious. After the usual exchange of pleasantries, with the rumble of pounding hoofbeats and the crack of locking mallets in the background, Drew started to extend the introductions to the back row of the boxed area, where Mary, her husband, and three of their children were seated. She waved aside the attempt with a good natured “Down in front. It can wait until this first chukkar is over.”

“Sit in the front row.” Luz motioned to the empty chairs one level down from the ones she and her mother occupied. “You'll be able to see better.”

The chair on her immediate right was vacant. Drew paused beside it, bending toward her and nodding his head in the direction of his two guests taking their seats in front of her. “I'd better sit with them so I can explain the rudiments of the game.”

“Of course.” Her attention was already attempting to shift to the action on the field, but Drew was blocking her line of sight and Rob's team appeared to be near the goal. Behind her, Mary groaned in disappointment. “What happened?”

“Rob's shot went wide of the goal. That Argie forced him to take a bad angle.” The ball had gone out of bounds along the backline, and the riders were pulling in their ponies to regroup. “Black Oak will have the knock-in.”

“Where's Trisha?” Drew turned in his chair to ask about their daughter.

“At the picket line, where else?” Luz glanced toward the end of the field, where the additional polo ponies waited for their chukkar of play. “As Rob says, who needs a groom when you have a sister?”

“Our seventeen-year-old is horse-crazy,” Drew explained to
his guests, and Luz noticed that the brunette occupied the middle chair, between the two men. “I suppose I shouldn't complain. The time to start worrying is when she discovers boys.”