The Adept by Katherine Kurtz, Deborah Turner Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

having to ask, that Peregrine had told the bare truth about Lady Laura.
    Adam identified himself and apologized for the lateness of the call, then gently related what he had been told. The maid supplied sparse details in a voice close to breaking—how Lady Laura had died shortly before four o’clock that afternoon, slipping away peacefully in the middle of an afternoon nap. Her eldest son and other members of the immediate family were now all gathered at the house. Funeral arrangements had not yet been decided.
    It was the expected scenario for a death in a noble family. Nor did the death itself come as any surprise to Adam, whose long-time friendship had widened to include professional attendance when Laura Kintoul first learned of her terminal illness. He requested a brief word with the earl in order to convey his condolences, along with his willingness to render any personal service the family might require. Then he rang off with the promise to call by Kintoul in the morning.
    As he laid the receiver gently back in its cradle, he found it increasingly difficult to hold at bay his own feeling of sudden loss, coupled with a fleeting twinge of doubt, that perhaps he had not done all he could.
    I knew this was only a matter of time, he thought. Perhaps I should have been there. To which another part of himself responded, All had been done that needed to be done. Laura was ready to make this journey. You yourself opened her eyes to the way . . .
    A sound in the hall outside the library recalled him to more practical considerations, and things needing doing for one still living. Seconds later, Peregrine appeared hesitantly at the library door, shuffling in outsized velvet slippers bearing Adam’s heraldic crest and wrapped up in a quilted blue dressing-gown at least two sizes too large for him. He said nothing as he allowed himself to be steered numbly to a chair beside the library hearth.
    He was still deathly pale from cold and the trauma of the afternoon and evening. He was also terrified. Feigning unconcern, Adam went to the drinks cabinet in the corner and poured two stiff measures of whiskey into cut crystal tumblers. He gave Peregrine a reassuring smile as he pressed one into his chilled hands.
    “Here—drink this,” Adam advised. “I’ve just rung Kintoul House. Let me get a fire going, and we’ll talk about it.”
    He put his own drink on the mantel and bent wearily to the hearth, slipping a fire-starter briquette under the kindling already laid and lighting it with a long match. When he had nursed it to a healthy blaze, he took back his drink and sat opposite Peregrine.
    “I spoke to Anna, Lady Laura’s maid,” he said quietly, in answer to the artist’s look of shrinking inquiry. “Of course she confirmed what you told me earlier. But you mustn’t mourn for her. She travels now in bright company.”
    Peregrine’s eyes flew wide at this calm statement of assurance.
    “What do you mean?” he demanded shakily. “You speak as if you know.”
    “I do.”
    “But—how can you know that? Who—what are you, anyway?”
    Adam schooled his expression to one of bland neutrality, wondering just how much Peregrine was seeing.
    “You know my name. You see my face,” he ventured.
    Confusion and fear flared again in Peregrine’s taut face.
    “Yes,” he whispered. “That’s part of what frightens me. Oh, God, if only I could stop seeing!” he moaned, shaking his head. “If you have some kind of power—if—if you’re some sort of—of wizard or something—for God’s sake, lift this curse!”
    His eyes were feverish bright, his hands clenched so lightly around the tumbler that Adam feared he might crush it.
    “I told you, it isn’t a curse!” he said sharply. “And I haven’t the power to make you stop seeing, even if I had the authority. Before we carry this conversation much further, though, you’re going to have to try to relax.” He jerked his own glass pointedly at the one in Peregrine’s