"Katherine Kurtz - Adept 02 - The Lodge of the Lynx" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

smallest details. But since my hand's started to heal, those impressions have begun to fade. I can still
recover them, but it takes much more effort."
Adam now was watching him closely, as their horses picked their way down the last of the sloping trail.
"That's an interesting speculation," he said. "What makes you so sure that it isn't simply the passage of
time?"
Peregrine grimaced and gave a snort. "Well, maybe you could get at the memories by using hypnosis or
something, but the only way 7 seem to be able to do it is by first concentrating my attention on the cut on
my hand. And since that's healing, I thought I'd better push on with the paintings before I maybe lost the
recall."
A smile lit Adam's dark eyes. "You're learning more quickly than I thought. I think I'd like to have a look at
what you've done."
"Somehow I thought you might," Peregrine said, with an easy grin that would not have been possible for the
tight-wound young man of a mere month before. ' 'I brought them along in the back of my car this morning. I
thought they might make for interesting conversation over breakfast."
The ring of steel-shod hooves on the cobbles of the stable yard summoned John, the ex-Household Cavalry
trooper who looked after Adam's horses. With a grin and a wave that was almost a salute, he came to take
the reins as Adam and Peregrine dismounted.
"Did you and Mr. Lovat have a good ride, sir?" he asked, as Adam ran up his stirrups on their leathers and
loosened Khalid's girth.
"Yes, splendid," Adam replied. "We had a good, long canter along the ridge in the upper field, and Mr. Lovat
even tried a few easy jumps - successfully, I might add. At this rate, we'll have him legged up enough to hunt
by Christmas."
Peregrine, tending his own mount, rolled his eyes in good-natured self-deprecation.
"In this case, I'm afraid that successful is a very relative term, but I did manage not to fall off!"
Adam chuckled as the horses were led on into the barn, and Peregrine fell in beside him as they walked
briskly on through the garden adjacent to the back of the house and headed for the back door. There
Peregrine diverted briefly to collect a portfolio from the back of a green Morris Minor Traveller. When he joined
Adam in the mudroom, hanging his riding helmet on a hook beside Adam's, the older man had already
exchanged his boots for velvet slippers crested with the Sinclair phoenix and was drying his hands on a
monogrammed towel.
"I'll take those on into the morning room while you wash up,"
Adam said, relieving Peregrine of the portfolio. "Humphrey's left a second pair of slippers there by the
bootjack. If we track mud on Mrs. G.'s clean floors, she may not speak to any of us for days."
Grinning, Peregrine peeled off his riding gloves and applied the bootjack to his own muddy boots, then thrust
stockinged feet into the indicated slippers. After ducking into the adjoining washroom to douse his face and
hands and run a comb through his hair, he followed the way his host had gone, along the service corridor and
on into the gold-damasked morning room.
Humphrey, Adam's butler of more than twenty years' service, had set up for breakfast in the sunshine of the
room's wide bow window. As always, the table was an immaculate array of crisp Irish linen, fine china and
crystal, and antique silver. Adam was sipping fresh-squeezed orange juice from a Waterford goblet while he
glanced at the front page headlines of the morning, paper. Humphrey was pouring his master's first cup of
tea. Both men looked up as Peregrine entered, Adam raising his glass in salute and Humphrey poising the
silver teapot over the cup set before Peregrine's place.
"Good morning, Mr. Lovat. May I pour you a cup of tea?"
"Yes, thank you, Humphrey. Good morning."
"Sir Adam tells me that you've moved the last of your boxes into the gate lodge," the butler went on. "I trust
that the new accommodations are proving satisfactory?"
Peregrine grinned as he pulled out the Queen Anne chair and sat, shaking out his napkin with a flourish. It
was barely two weeks since he had accepted Adam's invitation to come and live in the vacant rear gate
lodge, and already he was finding it a decided improvement over the cramped studio loft he had occupied in