Beauty and the Brain (30 page)

No. She’d chosen the wisest course to
follow. Her very success should have taught her as much by this
time.

Except that her success had fallen short
with Colin.

“Bother!” She heaved a pinecone at a tree
and kept walking. The day had been perfectly gorgeous, and she
didn’t pay much attention to the fading sunlight as the afternoon
crept on toward evening. The trees surrounding her cut out a lot of
the sun’s brightness anyway. It wasn’t until she realized she was
having trouble seeing the trail that, with a start, she decided
she’d better turn around and head back to the lodge.

When Brenda didn’t come downstairs to have
dinner with the rest of the Peerless folks in the dining room,
Colin silently cursed to himself. Trust Brenda to thwart his
desires in this selfish way. All he wanted to do was gaze at her,
for heaven’s sake. He hadn’t planned on touching her again.

Well . . . eventually, he wanted to touch
her. But not tonight. Tonight he only wanted to look at her, as one
might look at a spectacular painting or something. Colin had never
had much truck with art, but he’d heard people say that gazing at
great works of art lifted the spirit and elevated the mind. He’d
feel uplifted and elevated if he could peer at Brenda for a while.
But no. She was even going to deprive him of that much
pleasure.

He was feeling very grumpy when Gil Drew
showed up. Then he felt even grumpier. Gil had a cheery greeting
for everyone. Colin eyed him dourly, wondering if he’d received
more than a mere embrace from Brenda. If she preferred that callow
blockhead to him, Colin would just—he would just— He didn’t know
what he’d do. Nothing, probably, but he’d feel really, really
bad.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t waltz over to Gil
and ask him if he’d bedded the beautiful Brenda. Such things
weren’t done in polite society. Not, he thought nastily, that a
motion-picture crew could be accounted as polite society. He eyed
Gil with disfavor as the actor joined Martin and both men walked
over to Colin. It was all Colin could do to force himself to smile
at them. He wanted to punch Gil Drew in his shiny pink baby’s
face.

“Howdy, Colin,” Gil said.

Colin wondered if the actor were being
deliberately offensive, then told himself not to be ridiculous.
Rather formally, he said, “Good evening.”

“Gil said Brenda’s having dinner in her
room,” Martin told him. “Why don’t you join us at our table,
Colin?”

He didn’t want to. He wanted to storm
upstairs, batter down Brenda’s door, and ask her why she was hiding
in her room. Was she ashamed of having made love to the silly Gil
Drew all afternoon after she’d rejected Colin?

Good God, he was losing his mind.

“Thanks, Martin. Don’t mind if I do.” He
heard the strain in his voice as he smiled and lied.

Neither Martin nor Gil seemed to notice.
George joined them, and the four men headed to a table next to a
window, where they would have had a wonderful view of the forest if
it had been daytime. As it was, the lodge’s electric outdoor
lighting illuminated a few of the closest trees

The woods appeared mysterious and
enchanting, and whatever that annoying thing was in Colin’s
chest—the thing that had been acting up ever since he’d met
Brenda—gave a painful twinge. He just wanted to be with her, dash
it, and he might as well quit lying to himself about it.

There had to be some way to get her. He only
had to think about it harder.

“Don’t you think so, Colin?”

He realized Martin had spoken to him and
started, dropping a Brussels sprout he’d just speared with his
fork. “Don’t I think what?” he asked, deciding in an instant that
it would be useless to pretend he’d been paying attention.

Martin chuckled. “Mind in the clouds again,
eh? Or in the books, rather, I imagine.”

Colin frowned, misliking this image everyone
seemed to have of him as some kind of inhuman learning machine. He
guessed he hadn’t done much to disoblige folks of the notion, but
he didn’t like it. “I guess.” he muttered.

“I asked if you don’t think the picture’s
going well.”

Colin re-speared his Brussels sprout, put it
into his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. After he swallowed, he
said honestly, “I don’t really know. You know more about making
movies than I do. I suppose it’s going pretty well, considering the
subject matter and the way it’s being treated. At least the tipis
don’t have flowers on them anymore.”

Everyone laughed. Colin hadn’t intended his
comment to be humorous, and he didn’t understand their laughter.
There was a whole lot about social behavior he didn’t understand.
He’d never much cared before. He did now, for all the good it did
him. With another frown, he ate two more Brussels sprouts.

“I think it’s going very well. I’ll be sorry
to see Jerry and the rest of our Navajo friends leave tomorrow, but
they’ve done a great job.”

Nodding, Colin said, “Yes, they have.” That
is to say, he guessed they had. He didn’t know. Dash it, he didn’t
seem to know anything anymore except stuff he’d gleaned from books,
and books didn’t offer him any guidance in matters of the heart He
meant flesh, not heart. Whatever he meant, it was painfully obvious
he’d been dead wrong about mating rituals.

After dinner, he trudged up the stairs and
started down the plush, carpeted hallway to his room. As he passed
Brenda’s suite, he paused. He stared at the door, frowning.

Should he knock? What would he say if she
answered the door and asked him what he wanted? He couldn’t very
well say he wanted to make love to her.

He should probably just skip it. She’d
surely not appreciate his showing up uninvited, especially if she
was trying to get some rest or study a script or something.

Bother. What to do, what to do . . .

With a disheartened shrug, Colin walked on
down the hallway without knocking on her door. Before he’d reached
his own door, he heard someone else knocking at a door behind him.
Instantly, he had visions of Gil Drew being received by Brenda
en dishabille
, and being invited inside to partake of her
favors.

Scowling, he turned and glared down the
hall. A bellboy stood before Brenda’s door, a message on a silver
tray held in one hand, a gloved fist preparing to knock at her door
again. The door remained closed.

After knocking a second time, the bellboy
leaned down and put his mouth near the keyhole. “Miss Fitzpatrick?
Miss Fitzpatrick, there’s a cable for you. It’s from New York City,
ma’am.” He sounded impressed.

Colin’s scowl faded, but he was faintly
troubled. It wasn’t like Brenda to ignore a knock at her door. She
was too nice for that—or too conscious of her image.

He felt a little mean when the latter
thought tiptoed through his head, mainly because he knew it to be
merely catty. Brenda had a genuinely gracious manner about her and
even though he was mad at her right now, he shouldn’t fail to
acknowledge it. God knew where she’d learned it, too, since she
couldn’t have had much in the way of training in such matters at
home, having been earning her family’s keep practically
forever.

The bellboy knocked one more time, looking
more disappointed as the minutes passed and no Brenda came to the
door. At last, and with a big, sorry sigh, he leaned over and
slipped the cablegram through the crack at the bottom of the door.
When he walked away, his shoulders were slightly slumped, Colin
could plainly see the boy’s disappointment not to have met the
magnificent Brenda Fitzpatrick in person and to have spoken to her
and handed her the cable. Unfortunately, Colin knew exactly how he
felt.

“Blast it, I’ll bet she’s only hiding.”

In truth, he didn’t believe it, but he used
it as an excuse to march back down the hall and rap sharply on her
door. No answer. He rapped again. Still no answer.

What the devil had happened to her? Where
was she? Was she in there, injured? The notion appealed not at all,
although it was more welcome than Colin’s next idea, which was that
she’d been so upset by him—or something else—that she’d tried to
end it all. He wracked his brain to recollect any signs in her
indicating she was so delicately balanced that she’d take an
overdose of laudanum or slash her wrists.

As hard as he tried, he couldn’t conjure an
image of Brenda as a suicide. Especially not merely because some
unknown scholar like Colin had kissed her.

He shoved his dollop of disappointment away
as unworthy. Which still did nothing to account for Brenda’s not
answering her door. Such behavior was unlike her. Dash it, was she
being deliberately elusive?

Why would she be elusive? Unless it was to
worry him, Colin couldn’t account for it. And really, if he were to
be honest with himself, he couldn’t account for it that way,
either. He wasn’t important enough in her life for her to want to
worry him. Blast it.

After he quit trying to include himself into
a scenario that might account for Brenda’s failure to answer her
door, Colin finally came to the conclusion that she’d gone out. But
where?

It was none of his business where she’d gone
or what she was doing. Colin knew it, and he turned and started
down the hall toward his own room at a steady clip.

His feet slowed. He stopped walking. Dash
it, this was no good at all. He couldn’t get the nagging image of
Brenda in some kind of trouble to leave him alone. With a bitter
sigh, he knew he’d get no rest this night until he made an effort
to discover her whereabouts.

Of course, if he discovered she was holed up
in Gil Drew’s hotel room, he might just have to shoot himself, but
that was a risk he’d have to take. Better to know than to continue
to suffer this dreadful apprehension. Or perhaps it wasn’t better
to know. He guessed he’d find out.

So, assuming as nonchalant an air as he
could summon under the circumstances, when his heart was beating
out a rhythm of disquietude and foreboding, he went searching for
Brenda.

She wasn’t in the lobby. She wasn’t in the
dining room. She wasn’t in the bar. She wasn’t in the card room. He
did discover Gil Drew in the card room and felt minimally better,
but not much.

She wasn’t in the billiard room. She wasn’t
in the reading room. She wasn’t in the kitchen—although the entire
Cedar Crest kitchen crew turned and gaped at him when he’d
looked.

She wasn’t in either parlor.

“What’s up, Colin? You look worried.”

Colin wasn’t pleased when George glanced up
from a deep armchair in the front parlor, where he’d been reading a
book. Because he didn’t care to have the whole world know his
business, Colin answered his brother casually.

“Couldn’t concentrate on my book so I
thought I’d take a walk.”

“Want any company?”

The last thing Colin wanted at the moment
was company. Unless the company consisted of Brenda. He forced
himself to smile “No, thanks I’m . . . considering a philosophical
problem.”

George nodded, as if he were accustomed to
his older brother considering philosophical problems. “Have
fun.”

Was George being sarcastic? Probably. Colin
couldn’t drum up any indignation at the moment. Perhaps later. He
continued his search.

She wasn’t in any of the hallways. She
wasn’t on the porch. She wasn’t anywhere on the grounds.

“Dash it, where is she?”

The evening air had turned chilly. Colin
crossed arms over his chest, glad for his sack jacket, even if it
didn’t provide much warmth. Frowning into the trees he could barely
discern by the light of the lodge’s outdoor lamps, he wondered if
Brenda had, for some witless reason, wandered off into the
woods.

It would be just like her, the little
fool.

But no. That was unfair. George was right
about her, and even Colin couldn’t deny it and continue to consider
himself a reasonable man. She wasn’t a fool. She was quite clever,
in fact. Maybe—although he wasn’t willing to admit it yet—she was
even intelligent.

Whatever her brain power or lack thereof,
she was still gone. With a soft curse, Colin returned to the lodge,
borrowed a blanket and one of those newfangled electrical torches
from the concierge, and went outside again. He felt like a fool
himself when he deliberately walked into the night-dark woods.

A sense of panic started to inch itself up
Brenda’s spine. With clenched teeth, she crammed it down and
stuffed the hole from which it had emerged with brass and grit and
a smidgen of fortitude. If she hadn’t been defeated by all the
other odds against her in this stupid life, she sure wasn’t going
to allow being lost in the woods to dismay her.

An owl hooted from a nearby tree. To Brenda,
it sounded as if the bird were jeering at her. “Liar,” it called to
her in Owl, and she sensed it knew she was already dismayed.

Were the Owls an Indian tribe? she wondered
inconsequentially. Where was Colin Peters when you needed him?

“Get a hold on your nerves, girl. You’re
just a bit disoriented. There’s no need to lose your mind yet.”

Talking to herself didn’t help. In fact, the
sound of her voice seemed eerie in the darkness of the forest. It
also seemed to startle the animal life surrounding her. From
rattling her with its chatter and hoots, it suddenly terrified her
with its silence. Darn it. She wished she’d kept her big mouth
shut.

But she was either walking around in circles
or she’d headed in the wrong direction entirely. She hadn’t seen
anything that looked familiar for a very long time, and now that
the sun had set, she could hardly see anything at all. She was
pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to recognize her own mother if she
appeared in front of her.

Or a bear.

The thought of a bear materializing out of
the gloom made the blood thunder in her brain and fear scream in
her head.