A Man of Genius Read Online Free Page B

on, warming to her talk, ‘I’ve wondered what would happen if the heroine chose the villain and pushed the hero down an abyss or shut him away like an idiot in a madhouse.’
    Evidently the idea, the words, were simply too strange for Sarah. She pricked her thumb with her needle, frowned, bent her head and licked the blood, then pressed the thumb against a rag from her basket.
    Could there really be disapproval?
    â€˜No one reviews my little productions, you know, Sarah. No one has to say to me, “Pray Miss, put down your pen and take up your needle.” I write to earn my bread, that’s all.’
    Sarah looked up then and laughed heartily. ‘My poor cousin, my poor Ann, why these apologies? I have never thought to be an independentwoman. It’s not possible for me and I do think women are made for marriage and the home, and to be cared for. But I can admire those few who don’t take this common path. Charles is less admiring I think, though he much respects and will love you, cousin Ann. Only I wonder whether it is possible to find content without following what our nature wants for us.’
    Before Ann could reply, Sarah hurried on, ‘But come, I hear the twins stirring. Please to see them after their rest. One of them is lisping words and both coo so prettily. You cannot but be charmed.’
    She was never quite charmed. All those wriggling limbs, all that mess, the incontinence. But she visited the house often.
    Why did this early conversation ooze into memory so many years later? Surely not because of that awkward defence of her way of living. Had Sarah anything to do with Robert? Doubtful. Ann expected compassion not shrewdness from such a lactating, sewing, buttressing being. At the time, that is.
    No, it was what she’d said to her cousin about the might-have-been plot. It raised a question. Did anyone in life choose the villain?

3
    W as Gregory Lloyd the preface to the meeting at Mr Hughes’s dinner?
    Because of him she was no virgin.
    She set little store by the change. There’d been no unwelcome price to pay. But there were those out in the world who put great weight on such activity, productive or not. She knew that.
    Whether he was seen as fall or freedom, Gregory Lloyd was the fault of the Putney house. As isolated as if on a rocky isle off Essex. In fact it stood a mere stone’s throw from the crowded public bridge.
    Caroline had a pair of widows for occasional gossip and cards, Mrs Graves and Mrs Pugh. They usually visited one at a time. Then they could talk simultaneously, Caroline of her irritating child, the guest of her relief at childlessness and her better-preserved furniture. Mostly they spoke in agitated undertones of shocking scandals from the newspapers. They loved the extravagance of royalty. Such pleasure tutting about the blubbery Prince of Wales and his malodorous princess, Caroline of Brunswick.
    Young Ann sat in the corner of the room with a book on her lap letting out sneering breaths.
    Apart from these women there was no community round them; not even a distant uncle or great aunt visited.
    Once a year her mother put a peacock-feathered ornament on a large turban leaving a fringe of false red curls, arrayed herself in a rainbow-coloured shawl, reddened her cheeks with crimson, looked in a small silver-edged mirror, and then entered a hired one-horse chaise. She was going to town ‘on business’.
    To the Strand, she’d say grandly for Martha to hear, to the main office of Moore & Stratton.
    The turban was because Gilbert had admired the headdress. He’d been to court and seen royal ladies in turbans of black and coloured velvet with high feather plumes; Gilbert cared nothing for pomp but he knew the ways of men and women in all degrees.
    On other rare occasions, similarly turbaned and shawled, she’d take herself and Ann to church for form’s sake. They were never detained by the vicar or the vicar’s wife,