"Katherine Kurtz - Adept 01 - The Adept" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

many refinements."
"Peregrine?" Adam cocked his head in new interest. "That wouldn't be Peregrine Lovat, would it?"
"Why, yes," Lady Laura replied, looking quite pleased with herself. "May I take it that you've seen his work?"
"Indeed, I have," Adam said. "Some of his portraits were hanging at the Royal Scottish Academy, the last
time I went. I was quite impressed. There was a luminance to his style, an artistic insight - one almost had
the impression that he was painting more about his subject than would be visible to the naked eye. I should
very much like to meet the man himself."
"I'm very pleased to hear you say that," she said, "because I should very much like him to meet you, too."
This candid disclosure earned her a penetrating look from her visitor.
"I don't suppose that would be the reason you asked me here today?"
Biting at her lower lip, Lady Laura breathed a long sigh and averted her eyes.
"I think he needs your help, Adam," she said quietly, linking her arm in his and leading him farther out of
possible earshot of their subject. "Perhaps I've no business meddling, but - Peregrine is more than a casual
acquaintance. You probably don't remember, but he was a friend of Alasdair's. They met at Cambridge.
Alasdair used to bring him up to the lodge at Ballater for the salmon fishing - before the accident."
Encouraged by Adam's attentive silence, Lady Laura continued. Alasdair had been her youngest and favorite
son. "Peregrine was away painting in Vienna when it happened," she went on a bit more strongly, "but he
came home for the funeral. That was the last I saw of him for quite some time, though he wrote regularly to let
me know where he was and how he was doing. At times, I almost felt I had a replacement son.
"So you can imagine my delight when I learned he'd rented a studio in Edinburgh," she went on brightly. "I
immediately invited him to come up and paint the children. He drove up the following week to do the
preliminary sketches. If I - hadn't arranged the meeting in the first place, I hardly would have recognized him."
She made a show of studying one of the tassels on the front edge of her plaid. "He was always rather a quiet
boy," she went on more slowly, "with more reserve, perhaps, than was strictly good for him. But he had quite
a charming smile when he forgot to be serious. And now - now he hardly seems to have any life in him at all.
It's almost as if he - wants to cut himself off from the rest of the world. And if someone doesn't come to his
rescue soon," she finished bleakly, "I'm afraid he might very well succeed."
As she raised her eyes to meet Adam's at last, her expression was one of mute appeal. Adam gave her frail
hand a comforting squeeze.
"Whatever else may be said about this young man of yours," he said with a gentle smile, "he is fortunate in
his friends. Why don't you come and help us make one another's acquaintance?"
Peregrine Lovat was standing behind the easel as they approached, nervously dabbing at a palette with a
brush whose end was well chewed. Every line of his body suggested tension. Seen at close range, he was a
classically attractive.young man of middling height, apparently in his late twenties or early thirties, with fine
bones and shapely, strong-fingered hands. Fair-skinned and fair-haired, he was meticulously attired in
light-weight wool trousers and a vee-neck cashmere sweater, both in muted shades of grey. The sleeves of
the sweater had been pushed up, the cuffs of the ivory shirt turned back neatly. The silk tie knotted precisely
at his throat proclaimed his Oxford connection, and permitted no allowance for relaxation, even when he was
working. His oval face and symmetrical features might have provided a study for da Vinci, except for the gold
wire-framed spectacles riding on the bridge of his nose. The large lenses made it difficult to read the color of
his eyes.
As Lady Laura embarked on the necessary introductions, Adam set himself to refining his initial impression,
going beyond mere physical appearance. What he saw at a second, more searching glance lent substance
to the fears the countess had expressed on Lovat's behalf.
Everything about the younger man suggested a state of acute emotional repression. The thick, bronze-pale
hair had been barbered to the point of ruthlessness at sides and back, and the chilly monochrome of his
attire only served to leach any remaining color from a face already pale and drawn, thinner than it should have
been. The line of the tight-lipped mouth was strained and unsmiling.
Lady Laura's voice recalled Adam from his impromptu assessment. She was speaking, he realized, to the
artist.