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

headlights; then he lurched forward, staggering toward the Bentley like a sleepwalker. He was not wearing his
glasses. "Is he drunk?" Janet asked. "I don't think so."
Throwing his topcoat around his shoulders, Adam stepped out of the car just in time to catch the younger
man before he fell to his knees. Seen at close range, in the merciless revelation of the headlights, Peregrine
looked even worse than Adam had imagined. His eyes were bloodshot and deeply hollowed from lack of
sleep, and an ugly bruise stained his right temple.
"Peregrine, what on earth has happened to you?" Adam demanded. "You look dreadful!"
Peregrine made a sound between a sob and a moan and clutched at Adam's sleeve with rain-chilled fingers.
"Help me," he mumbled brokenly. "Please - you have to help me."
"Of course I'll help," Adam assured him. "But let's get you in out of the weather first."
Humphrey had left the driver's seat of the Bentley, and was coming around the front of the bonnet to join
them. Janet's face was a pale blur in the opening of the left rear door. With sudden decision, Adam headed
Peregrine toward the Morris Minor, putting his own coat around the younger man's shoulders before bundling
him into the passenger seat with Humphrey's help.
"I'll deal with this," he told the butler, as he closed the door on Peregrine and headed around to the driver's
door.
"You drive Lady Fraser home. Tell her I'll ring her tomorrow and explain."
As Humphrey retreated to the Bentley, bending to speak to Janet as he closed the door, Adam glanced at
Peregrine. Huddled deep in Adam's coat, the artist was shakily pulling his spectacles from an inner pocket,
sliding them onto his face with trembling hands. Adam reached for the ignition, for he wanted to get Peregrine
back to the house, but the keys were not there.
"I'll need the car keys, Peregrine," he said quietly, holding out his hand.
Peregrine dragged them clumsily from his coat pocket. When he unclenched his Fingers to drop the keys
into Adam's waiting hand, Adam caught sight of a row of raw, half-moon gouges across his palm where he
evidently had driven his own fingernails deep into the skin. Adam said nothing for a moment, merely locating
the correct key by the light of the Bentley's headlamps and then starting the car.
Humphrey activated the gate from inside the Bentley, and Adam put the Morris into gear and eased it
through, glancing sidelong at his silent passenger as he negotiated the few dozen yards to the garage.
Floodlights came on as he pulled into the stableyard, triggered by an electric eye, and Adam parked the
Morris under one of them.
"I'm - sorry to be such a bother," Peregrine murmured huskily, when Adam had pulled on the hand brake and
switched off the ignition. "I wouldn't have come here, but I had nowhere else to turn. I - think I must be going
mad."
Adam's dark gaze was steady. "Why do you say that?"
Peregrine made a small gesture of miserable helplessness, not daring to meet Adam's eyes.
"I wanted to kill myself earlier," he muttered. "If I'd had a gun in the studio, I probably would have done it.
Then I thought of gouging out my eyes with a palette knife. I only just managed to stop myself, by clenching
my fists as hard as I could and slamming my head against a wall." He gave a bitter, half-hysterical laugh. "If
that's not mad, I don't know what is."
"Why don't you let me be the judge of that?" Adam said quietly. "Can you tell me what made you suddenly
decide on this course of self-destruction?"
A long shudder wracked the younger man from head to foot. "Lady Laura," he said hoarsely. "She's dead.
She died this afternoon."
This bald announcement kindled a gleam of enlightenment as well as grief in Adam's steady gaze.
"You were right to come to me tonight," he said, after a heartbeat's silence. "I'm only sorry, for your sake,
that you didn't come sooner."
"Then you think you can help me?" Peregrine asked disbelievingly.
"I think you can be helped," Adam corrected carefully, still taking it all in. "For my part, I shall do whatever
lies within my power. Meanwhile, we should get you out of those wet things."
With Humphrey otherwise engaged, it fell to Adam to manage the domestic details. After showing Peregrine