A Man of Genius Read Online Free

distant. She never approved of me. She was full of Gilbert as if I had had nothing to do with either of them.’
    Sarah was bewildered. With a shock she understood: it was heraunt who was Caroline. She’d never heard any woman call her parent by a Christian name. It was very strange. ‘Oh, I’m sure she did, somewhere, underneath. You are so clever. And besides, mothers always do.’
    â€˜Do what?’
    â€˜Love, so in the end they approve.’
    â€˜Is that your experience with your little brood?’
    Sarah’s fair face puckered. ‘Well, yes, I suppose it is.’
    â€˜No favourites among them, one you care for more, one less?’
    â€˜That’s a different thing.’ She stopped, then grinned. ‘I expect your mother was impressed by your writing, cousin Ann – it is Ann not Annie? You a woman making books. That is something.’
    â€˜Now there you are quite wrong, Sarah. We parted long before I did it for a living.’
    A shadow crossed Ann’s face. ‘She thought I was stupid. She said it often.’ Her eyes focused behind her cousin. ‘I had a weakness in my chest, an asthma, and when it came on me I breathed through my mouth. Caroline – I was not to call her Mama except when told to in public – left me standing as she spoke about my father’s mania for astrolabes. I was just ten years old. My mouth fell open. Caroline saw it, stopped in mid-sentence, stood up and screamed, “Close your mouth, you stupid girl. You look like an idiot, an idiot I say. Get out of my sight.•”
    The telling of this distant, so demanding memory was too savage. Ann was ashamed. But there’d been something in Sarah’s placid face that urged her on when she’d better have been reserved.
    She swallowed, ground her teeth a little, smiled and tried to rescue the moment. ‘I believe, if she thought of my future at all, Caroline wanted to see me married to a powerful – yes powerful – gentleman, the mistress of a mansion where she could preside as a lady. But how . . .’ Ann trailed off.
    Sarah chuckled with relief – though her eyes remained serious, her pale face showing a fading blush. ‘What mother does not want that for her daughter!’ She paused. ‘Do not you think, dear Ann, that perhaps we daughters want something of the sort for ourselves when we are out of pinafores?’
    â€˜Not me.’
    â€˜Possibly so, cousin Ann. Or perhaps you thought you might not have it.’ Afraid she’d offended, she added, ‘Not that you could not, but that you had not the way of wanting it enough. You have said as much.’
    â€˜I doubt many men could have made me happy or would have wished to, and I don’t know how I would have made them so.’
    Sarah had no response. She tried to keep pity from her eyes. She’d seen the bitterness in her new cousin; it made her angular where she’d be better round and smooth. She herself was used to adapting. It was what women did, what her mother had taught her to do, and what in time her daughters would do. But she already knew enough of Ann’s eccentric life to see she lacked a useful model.
    â€˜Tell me about what you write,’ she said much later. ‘You have hinted but not described it to me. I think it so bold a step to take. I could never do it.’
    â€˜Do you really want to know?’
    â€˜I really do.’
    They were in the small snug back parlour beside a cheery log fire. Sarah sent the maidservant for more hot water and settled herself further into a comfortable armchair. ‘Sit back, Ann, you are at home here.’
    She did speak – haltingly at first, then more loosely.
    Suddenly Sarah clapped her plump hands. They made hardly a noise beyond a soft fleshy thud. Then, with her usual little chuckle, she asked, ‘Do you base the books on your own life?’
    â€˜No,’ smiled Ann, ‘no, no, of