Beauty and the Brain (21 page)

“That’s exactly how I feel.” Unkind, Colin.
Very unkind. He didn’t apologize.

Brenda awoke on the second day of filming
Indian Love Song
feeling tired and somehow dispirited. She
wasn’t sure why this should be, unless it was because she was sick
of her life. She was tired of never being able to do as she
pleased, of always and forever being on display. Even when she went
for a casual walk in the park, people recognized her. That was
because of the moving pictures. Sometimes she wished she’d stuck to
vaudeville and the legitimate stage and never ventured into the
pictures.

But no. She had too many people dependent
upon her have passed up the opportunity to make money in this new
and exciting industry. And she was making money. Heaps and piles of
it. Not only was she a respected comedic actress, but she’d also
been asked to model for magazine ads and to endorse products. Now
she was not merely an actress and singer, but she was also
recognized as the Maiden Dew Skin Lotion girl. There was lots of
money be made in commercial advertisements these days.

Everything she did, though, plastered her
face before the public. Sometimes she just wanted to don a pair of
her brother’s trousers and go riding in the woods in Vermont or
upstate New York, but she couldn’t.

As sure as she appeared anywhere improperly
clad, she’d run into a photographer or a newspaper hound after a
story. And people like that loved nothing better than to find a
celebrity appearing in public looking disreputable or unkempt.
Newspapers and the public thrived on scandal. Which was one of the
reasons Brenda had never, ever, not even once, allowed her name to
become linked with that of any man. It was also true that she’d not
yet met a man with whom she wanted more than a casual
friendship.

Until she met Colin Peters.

Which was why her ambivalent feelings about
Colin troubled her. He could be such a pompous ass sometimes that
she wanted to leap on him and scratch his face with her
fingernails, just like a cat or an hysterical woman. Invariably,
her violent urges were accompanied by the almost unbearable desire
to kiss him and make mad, passionate love with him.

Brenda had never been to bed with a man. She
was sure anyone who knew anything at all about the acting life
wouldn’t believe it, but it was true. She’d never found a man
attractive enough to make her want to jeopardize her reputation
and, as a consequence, her family’s welfare. Unfortunately, Brenda,
all by herself, constituted her family’s welfare.

One of these days her brothers would be out
of school and earning a good living. And her sister was also headed
for a good career although, Brenda knew, the opportunities for
women were nowhere near as good as those available for men. It
wasn’t fair, but nobody seemed to care about that but her. And
Kathy’s health was fragile. She shouldn’t be obliged to work hard,
because she had a weak heart.

“Lord, girl, get a hold of yourself.” She
scowled into her mirror, then smiled. Ah, that was better. Even if
she didn’t feel like smiling, she looked happy. Nobody but her
would ever know.

Something tickled at the back of her mind,
something she ought to remember and which was very interesting, but
. . . Oh! That’s right. Colin’s brother. Colin hadn’t been happy to
see poor George; it had been obvious from the moment he’d spotted
him.

Brenda’s mood brightened considerably. She
was happy George had come, whatever Colin was. In fact, she could
hardly wait to talk to him and find out what he was doing here. She
wondered if he’d run away from his ever-so-proper home.

Feeling better about her life and the day,
she plopped a straw hat onto her golden curls and left her room.
She found George in the dining room at a table with Martin and
Colin and hurried to join them, smiling broadly.

“Good morning, everyone!”

They all looked up at her. Martin smiled.
Colin frowned. George looked smitten. They were all reactions she’d
expected. Damn Colin for being such an intolerable stuffed
shirt.

“Hey there, Brenda,” Martin said happily. He
was almost always happy. It was because he loved his work. Brenda
envied him that.

Colin, who also loved his work, was
different. He managed to stop scowling long enough to say, “Good
morning,” but she could tell he wished her elsewhere.

George had to gulp before he could form
words, “Good morning, Miss Fitzpatrick.”

She gave him a warm, inviting grin, hoping
it would help him relax a little bit. When she saw his dark eyes
open up as wide as saucers, she guessed she’d overdone the inviting
part somewhat.

George hurriedly stammered, “Y-you look
beautiful this morning.” Then he blushed.

Brenda felt herself go warm and melty
inside, both in sympathy and in appreciation. The poor boy couldn’t
be more than eighteen or nineteen, and he was in patent distress
about something. Even so, he’d managed to pay her a pretty
compliment, something his older and probably smarter brother had
never done, the wretch. “Thank you very much, George.”

Martin had risen to hold a chair for her,
and she smoothed out her skirt and sat. She did look good. She had
to. Looking good was her livelihood. Today she’d chosen her lilac
silk with the high, lacy collar. She looked rather like a forest
sprite in this dress, which had seemed appropriate to her,
considering the location of the lodge.

A waiter appeared, and she gave him her
order for breakfast. The others were lingering over their coffee.
Since Colin seemed disinclined to speak to her and looked more than
usually gloomy, and since George was evidently tongue-tied, and
since Martin was studying a list, presumably of things to do, she
decided to initiate a conversation about the picture. It seemed a
logical and unexceptionable topic of conversation, and one not even
Colin could disapprove of, unless he was even fussier today than he
normally was.

“Is that the shooting schedule, Martin?” Her
tea arrived, and she sipped it, grateful to have something to do
with her hands.

Martin looked up from his list. “Yes. We’ve
got to get the Indians’ parts finished today, because they’re
returning to Arizona tomorrow.”

She nodded and shot a quick glance at Colin.
She half expected him to renew his objections to the Indians, but
he didn’t. He looked like a broody hen; probably worrying about his
brother. She wondered what George’s situation could be to bring him
here, to a brother whose displeasure at his popping up was
overt.

“I hope you’ll enjoy watching this picture
being made, George,” she said in an effort to draw him out “It’s
not as much like a play as lots of people think.”

“Sarah Bernhardt was in a picture that was
exactly like play,” said Colin in his crabby voice. “They even had
a stage and a curtain.”

Brenda eyed him with disfavor. “Yes, Colin,
but no one’s done a picture like that since. Perhaps you haven’t
noticed.”

He glared at her “I noticed.”

“Then perhaps you failed to notice that the
motion picture medium offers a wider range of possibilities as to
scenery, movement, and drama than that proscribed by the
stage.”

“Yes,” he said, evidently loath to admit it.
“I understand that, too.”

She nodded sweetly at him. “Ah. From your
comment, I’d not got that impression.”

Martin said hastily, “Here, George, would
you like to come with me? Our first scene is going to be one in the
Indian village. The only actors will be Indians.”

George shot a glance at his brother, then
rose as if he couldn’t do so fast enough. “I’d like that, Mr.
Tafft. Thank you.” He smiled shyly at Brenda. “Enjoy your
breakfast, Miss Fitzpatrick.” Then he blushed, as if he wished he’d
been able to think of something more cogent to say.

“Please,” she said, wishing she could put
the boy at his ease, “call me Brenda. I hope we can be
friends.”

He stuttered out something that sounded
remotely like thanks and fled, hurrying after Martin as if he
feared being left behind. He didn’t say goodbye to his brother.

Colin muttered, “Good gad,” under his
breath. Brenda’s eyes thinned, and she peered at him coldly.

“Some lousy kind of big brother you
are!”

Colin felt his eyes narrow, his lips pinch,
and his color heighten as his anger rose. Along with anger was
another emotion he couldn’t pinpoint, but it didn’t feel good.

He hated emotions. They were so—so
uncomfortable. He much preferred the silent, unsentimental world of
academia. He was comfortable there; ever so much more comfortable
than when he was forced to confront the unstable whims, fancies,
and moods of people like Brenda Fitzpatrick. Or his brother
George.

He lifted his eyebrows in what he hoped was
a sardonic expression before saying frostily, “And what, pray, do
you know about the kind of brother I am?”

She sat across from him and looked about as
mad as he felt. Her breakfast had not yet been served, and she
stabbed at the table in front of her with a slender, beautifully
manicured forefinger. “I know because I’ve seen the two of you
together. And apart. And that poor boy is terrified of you, in case
you couldn’t tell for yourself.”

Terrified? Again Colin’s eyebrows lifted
like larks soaring. “Terrified? Of me? You’re out of your mind. Not
to mention a meddling busybody.”

“Oh, pish! I can’t even imagine what the
rest of your family is like if poor George came to you instead of
going home when whatever it was happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“Obviously something happened, and he’s
either very sorry or very embarrassed about it. What I don’t
understand is why he came to you of all people.”

“And why shouldn’t he come to me? What do
you mean by that?” His sense of outrage was growing by the
second.

“I mean you’re an evil-tempered,
unsympathetic brute, is what I mean. I can’t imagine coming to you
for help for anything at all, but if George chose you over the
other members of your family, they must all be even worse than you,
which is almost impossible to imagine, and also must mean that you
come from a miserable tribe of trolls and ogres!”

Her voice had risen, and when she came to
the end of her unconscionable condemnation of his family, she
sucked in a huge breath, as if trying to cool herself off. Colin
was pretty hot himself. He’d opened his mouth to refute her charges
when the waiter came with her soft-boiled egg, toast, and sliced
orange, and he had to swallow a furious retort.

It took her only a second to re-conform her
face from an expression of wrath—although what she had to be
wrathful about, Colin had no idea—to one of serenity. “Thank you so
much.” She smiled at the waiter, who looked like he might faint
with only a little more encouragement from her.

Colin snorted, furious that this
insufferable woman could have tricked so many people into believing
her to be charming.

Oh, very well, dash it, she
was
charming. Sometimes. Not this morning. And seldom to him

She whacked the top off of her egg with a
knife as if she wished it were Colin’s head then glared at him. “I
have no idea what George has done to earn your disapprobation, but
it can’t be all that bad. For heaven’s sake, the boy can’t be more
than eighteen or nineteen.”

“He just turned eighteen,” Colin said,
begrudging her the information, since it proved her right about his
age, if not a single thing else.

“Eighteen.” She took a bite of egg and a
bite of toast and chewed them, swallowing before she followed up on
her statement of George’s age. “Eighteen years old. A child. An
infant! And you’re treating him as if he were the Big Bad Wolf and
had just eaten all the little piggies, who were probably Navajos
masquerading as Apaches in Sioux territory. I can’t imagine
anything else that would get you so het up.”

Colin drew in air, offended almost beyond
bearing. “Sarcasm does not become you, Miss Fitzpatrick. Be
careful, or your many fans might come to realize you’re not the
saint you pretend to be.”

She swiveled her eyes up and gazed at the
ceiling in a God-give-me-patience expression that Colin resented
like thunder. “If anyone thinks I’m a saint,” she said, and there
seemed to be hot coals burning her words, “it’s not my fault.”

He snorted again, although he had a niggling
feeling she was right. Dash it. “At any rate, you know nothing
whatever about my brother, my family, or me, and I’ll thank you to
keep your opinions to yourself.”

She eyed him malevolently. He got an eerie
sensation of blue lightning issuing from her gaze, sort of like
fiery pitchforks from hell. Because her scrutiny made him
uncomfortable, he picked up his coffee cup and drained it. The
coffee in it had gone cold and tasted vile.

“I don’t know a thing about you, your
family, or George,” Brenda said in a measured cadence that reminded
Colin of a death march. “But I’ve met you and I’ve met George, and
I’ve seen the way he looks at you, as if he expects you to take out
the horsewhip and flay the hide from his back. If you had any kind
of decent relationship with your brother, he wouldn’t look at you
like that, and you know it. Why, the poor boy looks as if he’d just
confessed to breaking a bone china teacup and is expecting you to
shoot him for it.”

With a feeling of smugness he knew was
probably unworthy of a gentleman, Colin snapped, “He did something
infinitely more awful than breaking a teacup, as a matter of
fact.”

Her eyes opened wide. Colin had to look away
from them. She was so damnably beautiful, and those eyes of hers
seemed to suck him in until he was left wallowing in a sea of
sensation. He despised sensation almost as much as he despised
emotion. Both phenomena were futile and a waste of time, and he
neither understood nor approved of them.