The Adept (5 page)

With Humphrey otherwise engaged, it fell to Adam to manage the domestic details. After showing Peregrine the location of the library, he shepherded the younger man upstairs to one of the auxiliary bedrooms and laid out dry clothing from his own wardrobe, returning downstairs then to make a phone call. The tear-choked voice that answered at Kintoul House belonged to Anna, Lady Laura’s maid, and confirmed, without 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 hand. “I wouldn’t want to have to pick glass out of your very talented hands, if that shatters. If the whiskey isn’t to your liking,” he added more gently, “I can give you a sedative.”

Peregrine blanched and shook his head, alarmed, but he did loosen his death-grip on the glass.

“N-no, please. No sedative. That only makes matters worse. If I take pills, I lose what little control I have left over this vision of mine.”

“Then you
do
have
some
control.”

Peregrine gave an unsteady, mirthless laugh.

“You’re humoring me, aren’t you? You think I really have gone mad.”

“No, I am genuinely interested to hear what you have to say,” Adam said truthfully. “But if I’m to help you, you must make up your mind, here and now, to be absolutely candid with me—however outrageous you may think you sound! I promise not to judge—but I have to know. It’s a
leap of faith, I realize—you hardly know me—but I can’t help you unless you do your part.”

Adam waited. Peregrine stared at him for a long, taut moment, totally motionless, then breathed out a long sigh, running a hand over his face and through his drying hair, dislodging his glasses.

“I’m sorry. I—there’s really never been anyone I could talk to, about this. Where shall I start?”

“The beginning is usually best,” Adam replied, “When do you first remember—seeing?”

Peregrine swallowed painfully, removing his glasses for a moment to rub the back of his hand across his eyes. Then he put the glasses back on, to stare down at the whiskey in his tumbler.

“I—can hardly remember a time when I
couldn’t,”
he murmured. “When I was a child, I used to see all kinds of things—things that weren’t really there. I used to see pictures on walls that afterward turned out to be blank. I used to see other faces in mirrors, besides my own. Sometimes I would see things happening around me that seemed to belong to other times . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Were you frightened by what you were seeing?” Adam asked.

The question seemed to take Peregrine, off guard. He frowned, remembering.

“No, now that you mention it, I wasn’t,” he said. “But it scared the hell out of my father, when he found out about it. He thought there was something seriously wrong with me.”

He took a breath before continuing. “When I was really small, I had a whole host of friends who used to come and talk to me all the time—tell me stories, play games with me. I know that lots of kids have imaginary friends, but eventually they outgrow them. Mine seemed very real. When I first went away to school, some of them used to help me with my studies. Sometimes they even gave me clues during exams—though they would never actually tell me the answer.”

He shot an oblique glance at Adam, encouraged when Adam remained attentively silent.

“It—seemed so natural that I never thought much about it,” he went on, “—until I started talking to some of the other boys. That was when I realized that—no one else was aware of my friends’ existence. Eventually I made the mistake of asking my father about it.”

“Why was that a mistake?”

Peregrine hunched his shoulders and grimaced. “If you had known my father, you wouldn’t have to ask. He was very much the hard-nosed realist. He was appalled to think that any son of his should be so fanciful.”

“Then, you discussed the matter in some detail?”

“I wouldn’t say that we
discussed
it,” Peregrine said, with a bitter curl of his lip. “Let’s say that we had words. It was made quite clear to me that my overactive imagination was not to be indulged. Unfortunately, that wasn’t much help. In fact, it only made the problem worse. It seemed like the more confused and upset I got, the more prone I became to seeing things . . .” He glared down into the liquor in his glass.

“How old were you?” Adam asked.

“About eleven,” Peregrine replied tonelessly.

“And do you know if your father ever considered submitting you for psychiatric evaluation?”

Peregrine shook his head, not daring to look Adam in the eyes.

“He thought it would reflect badly on the family, if word ever got out. Eventually he abandoned trying to reason with me, and simply made it clear that if I—wanted to continue being his son, I had better learn to control my delusions.”

Adam only nodded. He had seen the pattern too many times before.

“Go on.”

Peregrine closed his eyes briefly and then continued.

“As you can imagine, the threat was a good one. I made every mortal effort to shut my eyes to the other world. I suppose his methods were vindicated, because by the time I turned thirteen, I’d finally succeeded in blotting it all out.”

The tone in his voice was dreary, rather than triumphant. After a pause, Adam said casually, “Let’s leave that for a moment. When did you first start drawing and painting?”

Peregrine looked relieved.

“That’s easy enough,” he said. “It was at the beginning of my third year of prep—about the time everything else had shut down. I took an art class as an honors elective.” He smiled wanly. “It was incredible. I’d never known I had it in me to draw. After that, it was as if a whole new world had opened up for me, to replace the one I’d lost.”

“What did you draw?” Adam asked, trying to steer him away from the emotional mine field of his sight.

“Oh, nice, safe landscapes and buildings, for the first year, with a strong emphasis on perspective.” Peregrine’s voice had a more confident ring to it, as he talked about his art: “Most of my classmates hated the technical assignments, but for me, the exercises in perspective were like a kind of—oh, I don’t know—a form of magic, I suppose. There were rules you had to follow, but the possibilities were almost infinite. The art mistress was very supportive, and I started picking up the pieces of my self-confidence.”

He took a tentative sip of the whiskey before continuing thoughtfully.

“It got even better, once we started in on life studies. Portraiture was my forte from the start. In my final year, I did a portrait of the headmaster as Robert the Bruce that was good enough to win me an important prize. My father was dubious about all this artistic effort—he would have preferred excellence in sports, I think—but you can’t argue with a picture on the cover of
Scottish Field.
Fortunately, my exams were good enough that even he couldn’t complain about
that.

“I wanted to go to art school next—he wanted me to read law—so we compromised on art history at Oxford, and then art school.” He grimaced. “I wish now that I’d done as he wanted and read law—or even become a banker or an economist.”

“Do you?” Adam carefully kept his tone uninflected.

“Yes!” Peregrine declared vehemently. “Oh, I started out well enough, during those first few years after I finished art school. I got a lot of lucky breaks, thanks to Lady Laura and others. I was even on the way to gaming a reputation, when things took a torn for the worse.”

“In what way?”

“My vision—changed,” Peregrine said. He took another swallow of whiskey. “I started seeing things again. I tried to control it, but I couldn’t always. More and more often, when I started on a new portrait, I began to see things I had no business seeing. Sometimes when I looked at a subject’s face, I would catch myself looking into his future—”

“Seeing his death, you mean.” Adam made it a statement.

Peregrine’s mouth tightened grimly. “It didn’t happen every time. But it happened often enough to convince me that painting anyone over the age of legal majority was courting insanity.”

“Which is why you’ve mainly painted children, in the last few years,” Adam finished, nodding. “What persuaded you to paint Lady Laura?”

“Did
you
ever try saying no to Lady Laura?” Peregrine replied, giving Adam an almost incredulous glance. “Be sides, the original commission was to paint her grandchildren. It was only after I’d started that she asked to be included in the picture. I couldn’t very well refuse her; she was the kindest and most generous of patrons—almost like a mother, if you really want to know. That’s why, when I realized what I was painting—”

He drew a deep, unsteady breath and tried to go on.

“I tried to tell myself that it couldn’t be true,” he whispered. “It was all I could do to continue working. I tried to blot out the knowledge, but I couldn’t. Then
you
showed up—and continuing to deny it became out of the question. Now she’s dead, as I foresaw. And I—haven’t got any tears left for her.”

He buried his face in his hands, a single dry sob wracking his frame. Sharing his grief, Adam reached across to lay a comforting hand on one taut shoulder.

“Peregrine,” he said quietly, “Lady Laura Kintoul was diagnosed with terminal cancer nearly six months ago. That was long before you made a start on her portrait. Foreseeing someone’s death is not the same thing as causing it.”