The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx by Katherine Kurtz, Deborah Turner Harris

promise to make it up to you when I get home.”
    “That you will, Noel McLeod,” she agreed with some astringency. But her dark eyes were twinkling. McLeod held her a moment longer, before releasing her with an effort. As she rose and made off towards the kitchen, the cat following expectantly at her heels, he picked up the telephone again and dialled the number for Strathmourne House.
    * * *

    While Inspector Noel McLeod was on the phone discussing the possibility of an occult-related homicide, Adam Sinclair was hosting a formal dinner for several dozen of his fellow patrons of the Societas, Musica Escotia, a social organization dedicated to the appreciation and support of the musical arts in Scotland. It was a black tie affair, with most of the men attired in Highland dress, or at least tartan waistcoats, and all the women decked out in formal gowns, many of them also sporting colorful tartan sashes and other accessories. In the course of the long, full evening, the guests had partaken of an excellent dinner featuring such Scottish culinary delicacies as poached wild salmon, roast pheasant in oatmeal, and Creme Auld Alliance, a sweet, heady blend of heather honey, whisky, and cream.
    Now they were being shepherded into the drawing room by the Society’s president for coffee and musical entertainment, the latter supplied, as was customary, by volunteers from among their own ranks. One end of the bow-fronted room had been set aside as an impromptu stage, and several of the guests busied themselves with final arrangements there as the rest filed in and began taking seats in the audience area, Adam among them.
    While the last few stragglers were still getting settled, Lady Janet Fraser leaned forward in her seat and laid a slim, jewelled hand affectionately on Adam’s shoulder.
    “My dear Adam, you really do throw the most excellent dinner parties!” she murmured. “True hospitality must surely count as a form of art, don’t you agree, Caroline?”
    The question was addressed to the sylph-like blonde woman seated at Adam’s side. Lady Caroline Campbell responded with a flutter of long, delicately tinted lashes.
    “Indeed,” she said with a roguish look in Adam’s direction, “I can’t think how you manage it. It must be very difficult with no one but Humphrey to help you with the arrangements.”
    The calculated coquetry of the remark caused Adam to wince inwardly. After an evening spent in Lady Caroline’s company, he was heartily wishing that Janet had not been so determined to provide him with a partner, lovely though Lady Caroline certainly was. She had skin like fine porcelain and the figure of a ballerina, and the emeralds clasped around her milky throat were just a shade paler than the couturier gown of bottle-green velvet—and probably cost enough to re-roof the entire east wing of Strathmourne House.
    For all her physical beauty, however, there was a slight note of shrillness and even desperation to her laughter that told him she was forcing it for his benefit—and not simply out of a desire to please. It was a reaction he encountered all too often. He could hardly fail to be aware that he was considered a prime catch on the marriage market.
    Not that he blamed Janet. She had tried. She and her husband Matthew were old and treasured friends from his childhood, ideally matched in their interests and affections; and having achieved such fulfillment in her own marriage, one of the burning ambitions of Janet Fraser’s life was to help Adam find a similarly suitable bride.
    But he was beginning to weary of playing Lady Caroline’s game of verbal cat and mouse. Even as he made a polite rejoinder to her most recent sally, he gave inner thanks for the music which shortly would be putting an end to conversation.
    The northwest corner of the drawing room was dominated by the presence of a harpsichord that had belonged to Adam’s grandmother. It was a lovely instrument, the honey-colored wood of the sound-box