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

when he and Adam's father used to drive far older cars far faster than Adam or Humphrey drove the stately
Mark VI. Afterward, Adam was persuaded to stay for drinks after most of the other guests had left, so that he
had just enough time to change before leaving Chatelherault to pick up his companion for the evening.
She was ready on schedule, and they arrived at the concert hall in good time. Janet, Lady Fraser, was the
wife of one of Adam's medical colleagues who had been called away on a consultation in Paris. The Frasers
lived just north of Edinburgh, on the other side of the Firth, and like Adam, were generous patrons of the
opera. Both Frasers had been friends since Adam's childhood.
Janet Fraser also was an incurable romantic, who teased Adam unmercifully about his bachelor eligibility and
was forever trying to arrange matches with young ladies of suitable lineage. Once Adam had made his
speech and returned to their box, she confined her good-natured badgering to the intervals, letting him lose
himself in the magic of the music, but she could not resist further sly digs once they were safely ensconced
in the privacy of the Bentley and on their way home.
"You really are impossible, Adam," Janet was saying, as Humphrey drove them north across the Forth Road
Bridge. "I'm always delighted to have you as an escort when Matthew has to be away on one of his trips, but
you need a lady of your own. You could have had any of a number of bright young things on your arm
tonight."
Adam sighed and sat back in the Bentley's deeply cushioned leather, beginning to tire of the game. He had
not yet abandoned the hope of eventually sharing his life with a wife and family, but the lady of his admittedly
exacting dreams seemed to be maddeningly elusive.
That was not Janet's fault, of course. Still, he was glad she could not see how her persistent harping on the
subject was beginning to annoy him. Though the white of his scarf and wing-collared shirt would be starkly
visible above the black of his dinner jacket, he knew that his face was only a vague blur. She was wearing
ubiquitous black as well, and blended almost invisibly into the darkness of the backseat, except where a
choker of diamonds glittered against a vee of white throat opening upward toward the whiter patch that was
her face.
"Must I keep reminding you that I'm saving myself for the right woman?" he quipped, giving her the
light-hearted rejoinder that he knew she expected. "You're already married, after all."
"Oh, Adam! You are so incorrigible. It isn't that you don't have normal appetites - I know that from long ago.
Lately, though, you seem to enjoy living like a monk!"
Adam considered the accusation. In that part of his life that he shared with only a few close intimates, some
aspects of their common work did recall the discipline and dedication required of monks; but that was hardly
anything he was prepared to discuss with Janet, dear a friend as she might be.
"Will you think me less monkish if we stop at Strath-mourne for a drink, before I take you home?" he asked
lightly. "I hasten to remind you that this is only an invitation for a drink. Lovely married ladies are always
welcome at Strathmourne Abbey's refectory table, but my monkish cell remains sacrosanct."
"Oh, Adam," she giggled. "I don't know why I put up with you. I don't know why I ever did."
But she allowed him to change the subject, once he had told Humphrey to make the necessary diversion,
settling into drowsy companionship with her head against his shoulder by the time Humphrey turned up the
avenue to Strathmourne.
The Bentley prowled up the winding track toward the gate-arch in a hiss of wet gravel. As they rounded the
last bend below the house, Humphrey reached for the remote control box to unlock the gate. Then he uttered
a startled exclamation and applied the brakes.
The Bentley skidded to a halt in a back-sheet of rainwater. Adam sat up sharply and peered ahead through
the forward windscreen, Janet stirring sleepily beside him. Drawn up at the closed wrought-iron gate and
blocking it was a dark green Morris Minor with timber sides. To the left of the car, a slight, rain-drenched
figure spun around in the full glare of the Bentley's headlamps.
"Good God, is that Peregrine Lovat?" Adam exclaimed, already reaching for the door handle.
The artist was wearing neither hat nor scarf. The rain had soaked through his trenchcoat, and his fair hair was
plastered flat to his skull. He evidently had been pacing beside his car for some time, for his feet had worn a
path through the wet carpet of fallen leaves. For an instant he stood arrested, as though mesmerized by the