Diamonds are for Marriage. Margaret Way
young female spectators, six of the eight players were bachelors.
In a cordoned off area beneath the deep shade of the trees were the polo ponies … A great polo pony was essential to a fine player’s performance and proficiency. The Blanchard team was superbly mounted. There were twenty-four ponies in all, mostly mares, that had to be made available during a match, due to the extreme demands put on a pony during the six period chukkas. Four minute breaks were taken to enable the players to change ponies.
Polo, one of the fastest, roughest, most dangerous games in the world of sport, was thus a rich man’s game. The upkeep of the teams of ponies alone was sufficient to keep it that way.
Leona was nervous. Nervous and excited too. She loved the game—the speed and athleticism of horse and rider, the strategies the brilliant pivotal players, like Boyd, came up with to clinch a game. But she had two men in her life to worry about. Boyd and Robbie. Dangerous collisions could and did happen even with the “right of way” rule. Robbie, though a fine player, was known on occasion to be downright reckless. Boyd, an even better rider, the far more experienced, subtle and considered player, was nonetheless given to spectacular displays especially on his number one polo pony, the beautiful mare, Andromeda, in play today. Robbie’s opposite number was a player Leona had watched many times before. Without question an experienced player with a big range of shots, he wasn’t above a bit of barging, hooking and blocking his opposite number to slow him down. Mostly it worked. So there was a duel on there. Even Boyd, who relied on thought, action and fantastic speed as opposed to dirty tactics, which actually made him the superior opponent, when the chips were down played his team to win.
Leona was wearing white—always good in the heat—a pinstriped fine cotton shirt with matching crisp white trousers, an eye-catching navy and white leather belt looped through the waistband. To complete the look she had brushed her hair high off her forehead, then caught it into an updated French pleat. She looked, as she always did, very chic. It was, after all, part of her job and so far as the family was concerned that was the way they wanted and expected to see her. Rupert had already complimented her on her appearance and kissed her on both cheeks. Obviously his son and heir hadn’t got around to having that heart-to-heart talk. Well, she had told Boyd she wanted to be well clear of Brooklands when that happened.
Jinty had had the good sense to keep a still tongue in her head, not wanting to fall out with the Heir. Tonya, though, as always, had a jibe to share. “Don’t you find white a problem?” she smirked, inspecting Leona from head to toe, immensely jealous and agitated by the way Leona’s slender figure and glowing head was soaking up all the sunlight.
“I’m not going to dig the garden beds, Tonya,” was Leona’s reply, her tone pleasant. Keeping one’s cool in the face of Tonya’s contrived insults and barbs only served to irritate Tonya the more. Tonya herself was looking bone thin but very stylish in a deceptively simple shift dress, its colour almost a match with Boyd’s red jersey.
Robbie, then Peter, came up to Leona, expecting and getting good luck and best wishes for a win. Peter put his arm tightly around her in some sort of claim, before his kiss landed on the side of her mouth, despite her best attempt to dodge it.
Nevertheless she knew the clinch would set off a chain of gossip. She remembered how one elderly member of the family had had a girl pregnant from a single kiss she’d caught one of the cousins exchanging with his then girlfriend. “Such things do happen!” was the dire warning.
“That boy’s in love with you,” Geraldine now told her, shaking her arm as if to put her on the alert.
“What a lot of rot, Gerri!” Leona tried to answer carelessly.
“Not rot, my dear,” Geraldine corrected her firmly. “Just be sure to tell him you’re spoken for.”
Spoken for? Leona felt the hot wave of colour stain her cheeks. “Are you going to tell me how you heard that?” Boyd was very close to his aunt. He must have told her.
“I’ve heard nothing. So far,” Geraldine maintained, adjusting the brim of her straw hat to a snappier angle. “I have eyes.”
Leona fell into the deckchair beside her, urgently taking Geraldine’s hand. “So what exactly is it you think you’ve seen? And with whom?”
Geraldine patted the small fine-boned hand that held hers. Then her shrewd grey eyes went past Leona’s lovely, imploring face. “He’s coming over right now. Don’t look so worried, child. I’ve had my suspicions for quite a while.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Leona jumped up, stopping only to whisper in Geraldine’s ear, “Gerri, I swear I’m frightened of you.”
“Don’t be frightened, child,” Geraldine looked up with a reassuring smile. “Everything will be fine.”
All it would need was a miracle.
“Flower Face, still running away?” Boyd swiftly caught up with her as she dodged through the trees, catching hold of her hand.
“I have to, Boyd. I’m feeling absolutely stretched.” Indeed she was. She rounded to stare up into his sapphire eyes, gemlike against his bronzed skin.
“You want us to have a nice quiet game?” he asked with such a beguiling half smile.
“Damn it! The game’s only half of it,” she said spiritedly. “I am nervous for you and Robbie. I couldn’t bear it if either of you were injured.”
“For heaven’s sake, I thought all your thoughts were with Peter!” he scoffed. “Where does he get off, hugging you like that? I was gratified to see you turn your head away. He was most certainly aiming for an off-to-the-wars type kiss.”
“Well, he didn’t get it!” Leona said in a tart voice. “Have you said anything at all to Gerri about … about … us?”
“One would have to get up very early in the morning to take Gerri by surprise,” Boyd said. “Gerri’s a mind-reader. Why, has she said something?”
Leona bit her lip. “She said everything will be fine.”
“And so it will,” he said. “So, are you going to wish me luck?” Those blue eyes sparkled a challenge at her.
“Think you’re clever, don’t you?” she muttered. On impulse, she reached up and pulled his shining blue-black head down to her. “Good luck, darling Boyd,” she crooned in a sweet seductive voice, her green eyes alight with malice. With infinite gentleness she cupped his dynamic face in her hands, then she kissed him squarely on his sardonic mouth.
There! Served him right! She never could resist his dares.
On her way back to her chair, Leona ignored the expressions on the faces all around her. Some were soft with astonishment, others hard with calculation. The family was already divided in its opinion of Leona and Boyd as a couple.
“Think you’re a siren, don’t you?” Tonya, frowning fiercely in the grip of jealousy, hissed at her as Leona passed close by. “Don’t get your hopes up. You’ll never lure Boyd.”
“Still, he’s just wonderful to kiss,” Leona pretended to gush, hastening to take her place beside Gerri. The match was due to start.
Robbie, nicely set up by his captain, scored the first two goals.
“Oh, jolly well played!” Geraldine clapped enthusiastically. “Of course it was Boyd, the tactician, who turned the play to offence, but I must say Roberto responded brilliantly. I’m just loving this. Rupert was a darn fine player. But you wouldn’t remember all that well, would you, dear?”
“Of course I do,” Leona said. Rupert, approaching sixty, had been warned off the game by his doctor after a number of bone shattering “bumps” and one crashing fall in his late forties.
“Didn’t have Boyd’s finesse, though,” Geraldine further commented.
As the match progressed it became apparent that it was a duel of wits between Boyd,