The Disenchanted Widow by Christina McKenna Read Free Book Online Page B

verdict. But he wasn’t too disappointed. There was much to explore in this new playground.
    After his ma had returned indoors, he made a beeline for the backyard. If China lay at the bottom of that well, he was determined to start at once on the removal of that big stone.

Chapter seven
    D aylight gradually suffused Lorcan’s room, making the ceiling tiles stand clear. He’d had a fitful night and was glad that morning had broken. Wednesday. It would not be an easy day. Wednesday afternoons were largely taken up by the weekly meeting with his superior, Sir Edward Fielding-Payne. Those meetings were generally fraught. And tomorrow evening he had that other appointment—the one he didn’t even want to think about. To top it all, the previous evening he’d had a phone call from his ever-fretting mother to say her varicose veins were troubling her, a call that was calculated to make him feel guilty for his neglect of both her and the family business.
    He eased himself into a sitting position and glanced at the easel in the corner. Would he ever be rid of the Countess? Her disquieting visage haunted his every waking minute. In the workplace he was retouching her and in his bedroom recreating her against his will. The thought of this dismayed him, as it always did, and he quickly switched his attention to the clock face. He saw it was six thirty. Time to get up. Already the day was rousing itself. The drone of buses was just about audible out on the Antrim Road. A muffled flushing sound from downstairs told him that Mrs. MavisHipple, his landlady, had emerged from her cluttered nest on the ground floor, directly below.
    Yes, mornings had become more stressful these days, and he resented that. A couple of weeks back, a new lodger had moved into the room opposite his: an earnest, hymn-singing, tea-drinking Presbyterian lady in hand-knits and sensible shoes who answered to the name of Miss Florence Finch. She was one of those ladies whom his mother might describe as having “missed her markets” in the marriage stakes.
    Miss Finch had upset his bathroom routine; a new strategy had to be worked out in order to accommodate her. The difficulty lay in her rodent-like quietness. Lorcan could never tell when she was up and about. They shared a bathroom, off the landing, which as yet—despite his many entreaties to the landlady—had no lock. This deficiency made for a great deal of anxiety and reconnaissance before he could venture forth each morning. Only the previous week, he had, to their mutual embarrassment, surprised Miss Finch in there. The demure lady had beaten a hasty retreat, complete with her knitting and a Victoria Holt doorstop of a paperback pressed to her bosom. The memory of the meeting still had the power to scorch his sensibilities like a gaucho’s branding iron. After much thought, however, he’d solved the problem: he’d invested in a transistor radio.
    The radio, unlike a lock, fulfilled three separate functions. First: he could take it with him and listen to the news every time he used the bathroom. Second: the very sound of the radio would deter Miss Finch from entering at an inappropriate moment. Third: a quick twist of the volume knob would generate enough racket to drown out whatever lavatorial tumult he might set in motion.
    It was a neat solution to a complex problem. He only wished he could tackle the rest of life’s little difficulties with such aplomb. He thought of his mother and the pub in Tailorstown—and shuddered.
    But first things first. He threw back the bedcovers, went to the closet, hauled out a long gray raincoat, and pulled it on over his pajamas. This, again, was done out of consideration for Miss Finch because he sensed that she was a prudish lady, for whom a man wearing pajamas might be as diabolical a sight as seeing Adam in the Garden minus his fig leaf. He gathered up his wash bag and towel and peered out into the corridor. All was quiet; he felt he was safe enough.
    Once inside