Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization E-Book

Nancy Holder

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 365

Beschreibung

In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds...and remembers.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also Available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Prologue

Book One: Between Desire and Darkness

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Book Two: Between Mystery and Madness

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Book Three: Crimson Peak

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization

Crimson Peak: The Official Movie NovelizationPrint edition ISBN: 9781783296293E-book edition ISBN: 9781783296309

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: October 201510 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2015 Legendary

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

LEGENDARY.COM    TITANBOOKS.COM

“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.”

— WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

PROLOGUE

LOVE.

Death.

Ghosts.

The world was drenched in blood.

A scarlet fog veiled the killing ground, then dripped down through the greedy, starved mineshafts into the tortured vats of claret clay that bubbled and gasped on the filthy, bone-white tile. Crimson earth seeped back up through the walls of mud. Allerdale Hall was ringed with brilliant red—a stain that clawed toward Edith’s bare feet.

But that was the least of her troubles.

Hell’s own child was coming for her. Implacable, unstoppable, a creature fueled by madness and rage, that had maimed and murdered and would kill again, unless Edith struck first. But she was weak, coughing blood and stumbling, and this monster had already claimed other lives—other souls—stronger and heartier than hers.

Snowflakes blinded Edith’s swollen cornflower-blue eyes; red droplets specked her golden hair. Her right cheek had been sliced open; the hem of her gauzy nightgown had soaked up blood, rot, and gore.

And crimson clay.

Limping on her injured leg, she moved in a slow circle, shovel raised as her chest heaved to the rhythm of the machine that had been built to plunder the earth of treasure. A clanking contraption that might still serve as the means of her destruction.

The sound pounded in her ears as she braced herself for the last battle. Nausea rolled through her as her heart skipped a beat. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her stomach clenched. Her bones ached and throbbed, and she could barely walk.

Everywhere she looked shadows loomed, red on red, on red. If she did survive, would she join them? Would she haunt this cursed place forever, enraged and afraid? This was no place to die.

Ghosts are real. That much I know.

She knew much more. If only she had pieced the whole brutal story together sooner, heeded the warnings, followed the clues. She had uncovered the truth at a terrible cost, but the ultimate penalty now awaited her and the one who had risked so much for her sake.

Behind the snow and scarlet gloaming, she caught a flash of running feet. Her grip on the shovel was slick in her clammy grasp. Her ankle throbbed and she was freezing, yet her insides burned so fiercely she expected smoke to plume from her mouth.

She backed up, whirled around, eyes searching, breath stuttering. Then time stopped, and her heart froze as she caught sight of a blur of sodden fabric, and bare feet sucking at the red muck as they came at her. The sharp blade, fingers smeared with blood, the fury that wielded it. Death was no longer coming.

Death was here.

And her mind cast back to how it was that she, Edith Cushing, had come here to fight it.

Once upon a time…

 

“For now we see through a glass, darkly;but then face to face: now I know in part;but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

— 1 CORINTHIANS 13:12

CHAPTER ONE

BUFFALO, NEW YORK, 1886

THE FIRST TIME I saw a ghost, I was ten years old.

It was my mother’s.

* * *

It was snowing on the day they put Edith Cushing’s mother in the ground. Large wet flakes wept in a leaden sky. The world was colorless. Dressed for deep mourning in a black coat and a hat that framed her stricken white face, little Edith leaned back against her father’s legs. The other mourners wore black top hats, heavy black veils, ebony coats and gloves, and jewelry wrought from the hair of their own beloved dead. The living folk of Buffalo owned entire wardrobes of fashionable ensembles designed for weeping and tossing clods of earth and rose petals on freshly dug graves.

The coffin—locked—gleamed like obsidian as the pallbearers conveyed the corpse of Edith’s mother to its final resting place beneath the monument raised in hopes of eternal repose for the members of the Cushing family. Swirls of weeping angel wings enfolded generations of the dead.

Her mother’s shriveled body had been so black that it looked as if she had died in a fire—or so Edith had overheard Cook describing it to DeWitt, their butler. Edith had been struck dumb by the horrific revelation, but had no way to confirm it. In the Cushing home, no one spoke to her about her terrible loss; all the servants fell silent whenever she walked into a room. She felt as invisible as a ghost; she wanted, needed someone to see her, wrap their arms around her and rock her, and tell her a story or sing her a lullaby. But the staff kept their distance, as if the little mistress was bad luck.

Now, in the churchyard, she spotted Alan McMichael and his sister Eunice. A year older than Edith, yellow-headed Alan with his ruddy cheeks was Edith’s boon companion in all things. His blue-gray eyes, the only spot of brightness in the graveyard, found her gaze and held it, almost as if he were holding her hand. Beside him, Eunice was fidgety and a trifle bored. Though Eunice was but nine, she had already been to a plentiful number of funerals. They were Victorian children and death was not uncommon.

But Edith had only one mother to lose, and that was new and bewildering. Heart-crushing. Tears wanted to come, but they only hovered at the rims of her eyes. She was not to make a fuss; well-bred children were seen and not heard, even when their worlds were falling apart. Alan, watching her, seemed to be the only one who understood her unbearable grief. Tears sparkled in his eyes.

Eunice shifted her weight and played with one of her ginger ringlets. Alan tugged gently on his sister’s wrist to make her stop and she batted at him. Their mother smiled wistfully down on them both as if she had not seen Eunice’s unseemly display. Mrs. McMichael was still pretty, still alive.

Alan kept hold of Eunice’s wrist. She thrust out her lower lip and their mother reached in the pocket of her sable coat, offering her daughter what appeared to be a sweet. Eunice grabbed it, jerking free of her brother’s grasp. Now it was Alan who pretended not to notice what was going on—or perhaps he truly did not see it. All his attention was fixed on Edith as a huge sob threatened to burst out of her aching chest. There would be no more sweets from Mama, no smiles, no stories.

Black cholera had taken her. A horrible death, agonizing and slow. Edith’s father had ordered a closed casket, and asked her not to look. So there was no parting kiss, no goodbye, no last words.

* * *

That is, until she came back. Three weeks after she died.

* * *

Time did not heal all wounds.

Her mother had been dead for almost a month, and Edith missed her more than ever. The black wreath still hung on the door and the servants wore armbands in the mistress’s memory. Cook had not wanted the maids to remove the black drapes from the mirrors. DeWitt said she was too superstitious and Cook had answered that she was merely careful. That you couldn’t be too sure when the dead were concerned. Back in Ireland, the spirit of a maiden aunt got stuck in a mirror in 1792 and had been haunting the family ever since. DeWitt had replied that as the drapes had gone up before Mrs. Cushing had expired, and she was now buried, there was no chance that the mistress was trapped.

Yet the drapes stayed up.

Edith was lying in her little daybed, weeping quietly in the dark with her stuffed rabbit for company. The hurt in her heart seemed deeper and more painful with each passing night. Shadows of snowdrifts mottled the dusty covers of the books her mother and she had read together, a few pages every night. She could not bear to open them.

The grandfather clock at the end of the hall ticked between her sobs like an axe striking wood. Outside her bedroom window, the ever-present snow fell silently over the eastern shore of Lake Erie and the headwaters of the Niagara River. The Erie Canal had fostered the fortunes of Edith’s family. Wind and frozen water. The beautifully appointed Cushing home was cold that night, as it had been every night since Mama’s death. Edith felt as if it were she who had turned to ice, and could never hope to be warm again.

I wonder if she is cold, down in the ground. Edith couldn’t banish the thought, even though she had been told a dozen times—a hundred—that her mother was in a better place.

She remembered when her room was the best place: the soft, gentle voice of her mother reading as she snuggled beneath the coverlet with a cup of hot chocolate and a hot water bottle.

Once upon a time.

Playing lullabies on the piano when Edith couldn’t sleep.

There was no music tonight.

Edith cried.

The clock ticked, counting off the seconds, hours, nights of life without Mama. Endless. Relentless. Heartless.

Then Edith heard a strangled sound that was halfway between a sigh and a moan. She jerked and clapped a hand over her mouth in surprise. Had she done that?

Her heartbeat stuttered as she cocked her head, listening hard.

Tick, tick, tick. Only the clock.

There it was again. A sad, low keening. A whisper of grief. Even… agony.

She bolted upright and slipped out of bed. As she crept across the chilly floor, the floorboards creaked and the rustle of silk caressed her ears. She was not wearing silk.

Cook had told DeWitt that Mama had been laid out in her finest black silk gown, and that her skin had turned just as black in the hours before she died. Cook had used words like “revolting, ghastly. A horror.” She had been speaking of her mistress like a monster.

Of Mama, who had been so beautiful, and smelled always of lilacs, and loved to play the piano. Who told her the most wonderful stories about plucky princesses who thwarted evil sorcerers and the princes who adored them. Who promised Edith that her own life would hold a “happily ever after” with a man who would build her a castle—“with his own two hands,” she would say, smiling very dreamily, then add, “like your father.”

But now, as Edith stared into the gloom, she couldn’t keep that Mama in her mind’s eye. Her thoughts kept returning to the monster, the horror, and she wondered if the shadows kept shifting of their own accord, or if that was the play of snowflake silhouettes on the wallpaper. She looked from the wall to the end of the hallway. It was not quiet there. The air seemed to flutter, and then to thicken.

Her blood chilled as a shape began to emerge from the gloom—a figure cloaked in shadow, floating at the end of the hall. A woman, swathed in once-fine black silk now tattered like the aging wings of a moth.

Was it just her imagination? A trick of the light?

Edith broke out in a cold sweat. It’s not there. It’s not.

She’s not.

Her pulse raced.

It was not gliding toward her.

She was not.

With a gasp, she turned away and darted back toward her bedroom. Her skin prickled and her cheeks felt hot. She tried to listen but could only hear a roaring in her ears and the thud of her bare feet on the carpet runner.

Edith did not see the thing that was trailing after her as she ran, or feel the skeletal fingers of a shimmering hand as they caressed her hair. Moonlight shone on finger bones, revealed a quicksilver glimpse of a tormented face, flesh eaten away.

No, Edith did not see. But perhaps she sensed.

A shade. A spirit compelled by inextinguishable love to return, by desperation to speak. Gliding, with the rustle of silk, and the clack of bone and withered flesh.

Edith saw none of that as she scrambled under the covers and clung to her bunny, quivering in terror.

But seconds later, as she turned on her side, she went absolutely rigid with shock. She felt the decaying hand wrap around her shoulder, smelled the damp earth of the grave, and heard the desiccated lips, a hoarse distortion of the voice she had known better than her own as it whispered into her ear:

“My child, when the time comes, beware of Crimson Peak.”

Edith screamed. She shot up and grabbed her eyeglasses. As she looped them over her ears, the gas lamps came back on. She hadn’t even realized they’d gone out.

There was nothing—no one—in the room.

Until, alerted by her shrieks, her father rushed in and gathered her up in his arms.

* * *

It would be years before I heard a voice like that again—a warning from out of time, and one I came to understand only when it was too late…

CHAPTER TWO

BUFFALO, NEW YORK, 1901

IT WAS MARKET day, and puffy white clouds tatted the sky like fine lace as Edith sailed over the muddy yard in her high-buttoned shoes. She had selected her burnished gold skirt, a white blouse, and a black tie to wear on this auspicious occasion. The skirt most closely matched her blond hair, which she had wound into a smooth chignon and topped with a smart new hat adorned with a modesty veil that identified her—to her way of thinking—as something more than a fashion plate and something less than a Bohemian. A bright young woman with ambition, then. And talent.

For the first time in her life, she had something she had created, a product to sell—and a potential buyer. She hefted the heavy parcel and smiled secretly to herself.

Livestock, street vendors, carriages and the occasional motorcar threatened to splash mud on her clothes. Unblemished, she crossed into the busy commercial building where she, Miss Edith Cushing, had business to conduct, and started up the stairs.

She took it for a good omen when Alan McMichael, now Dr. Alan McMichael, hailed her as he came down the stairs, stopping to meet her as she ascended. They hadn’t seen each other in ages; he’d been in England studying to become an eye doctor. She was rather startled to realize that he truly was all grown up, his face angular in that way adult men’s faces were—baby fat gone—and his shoulders quite broad beneath his coat. He was not wearing a hat, and his hair was nearly the same color blond as hers.

“Edith,” he said delightedly, “you know I’m setting up my practice?” He seemed to assume that she knew he’d returned.

Eunice never said a word to me, she thought, a bit put out. But on the other hand, Edith hadn’t been calling on the McMichaels. She hadn’t been calling on anyone, and in polite society, that was rather rude. One asked after one’s friends. Except that Eunice was not friendly, not in the least. One called on one’s acquaintances, then. One inquired after their health and kept up with the important events in their lives—which in Eunice’s case would include the minute details of parties, balls, and galas.

How extraordinarily dull, Edith thought. Oh, dear, I’m only twenty-four, and it appears that I’m already a crotchety misanthrope.

“At ten I’m going to see Ogilvie,” she informed him, regaining her sense of excitement. “He’s going to look at my manuscript and see if he wants to publish it.”

She had begun the book before Alan had left for medical school, reading sections to him when they chanced to meet—rather more often than one would have anticipated, given that they were only friends. He had been the one to whom she had confided her mother’s ghostly visitation, although of course Eunice had eavesdropped and told the whole world. And the whole world had mocked and ridiculed Edith. From that day to this, Edith had decided to exploit the wild imaginings of her grief-stricken ten-year-old self—for such they must have been—as the metaphor for loss in her novel. Though the memory of that nightmare still haunted her, she was grateful for the terrifying experience, as it had provided riveting grist for the mill.

His smile grew at the mention of the completion of her book. “You do know that it’s only nine o’clock,” he ventured.

“I have a few corrections I wish to make first.” She began to go through a mental checklist of her revisions, then became aware that Alan had just asked her to stop by his new office soon, and was saying something about some uncanny pictures he wished to show her.

She gave him her full attention. She truly was glad to see him. So perhaps she wasn’t precisely a crotchety misanthrope. Perhaps she was simply selective about whose details to keep track of. New business ventures were far more exciting than the latest fashions—although she did not consider herself a frump.

“I’m to help Mother,” he was saying. “She’s throwing a party tomorrow for Eunice’s suitor. Why don’t you come?”

As if on cue Eunice, some of her social-climbing hangers-on, and her mother, Mrs. McMichael, appeared on the stairs. They were dressed to the nines, and Eunice was glowing.

“We met him at the British Museum,” Mrs. McMichael announced. “Last fall, when we were visiting Alan.”

“You wouldn’t believe it. He’s so handsome,” Eunice gushed, all rosy blushes.

Edith was able to feel happy for Eunice. The other girl’s dream was to be well married. She would lead a husband a merry dance, that was for certain.

“And he has now crossed the ocean with his sister only to see Eunice again,” Mrs. McMichael continued, preening.

“Mother, he’s here on business,” Eunice protested mildly, but her words were only for show.

“Or so he says,” one of Eunice’s sycophants trilled, and Eunice blushed. If she’d been carrying a fan, she would have fluttered it like a butterfly to cool herself.

Mrs. McMichael pressed on. “It seems he’s a baronet.”

“What’s a baronet?” another of Eunice’s companions asked, and Mrs. McMichael shrugged with studied nonchalance.

“Oh, well, an aristocrat of some sort—”

“A man who lives off land that others work for him. A parasite with a title.” The sharp words tumbled out before Edith had a chance to hear herself. Alan grinned behind his hand. But Mrs. McMichael arched her brows.

“I’m sorry,” Edith began.

But Mrs. McMichael could clearly hold her own when any sort of challenge was raised regarding a matter close to her heart. Or more accurately, her pride.

“Well, this parasite is perfectly charming and a magnificent dancer. But that wouldn’t concern you now, would it, Edith?” she added with asperity. “Our very own Jane Austen.”

“Mother,” Alan remonstrated her gently.

“Though I believe she died a spinster.” Mrs. McMichael’s gaze was flinty, her mouth set in a tight, insincere smile.

“Mother please,” Alan said.

“It’s quite all right, Alan,” Edith assured him. She met the older woman’s gaze full on. “I would prefer to be Mary Shelley,” she said sweetly. “She died a widow.” Savoring her sally, she took her leave.

She found a space in the public library’s reading room and set down her manuscript, pushed her glasses onto the bridge of her nose, took out her pen and ink, and set to making her changes. Her pen leaked and smudged her fingers, so that when she smoothed back tendrils of her hair, she unknowingly left her own fingerprints on her forehead.

She had no idea of her somewhat disheveled state when at last she made her way to Mr. Ogilvie’s office. Early. Which the great and powerful publisher pointedly mentioned as she took a seat before his desk. She churned with well-concealed anxiety as page by page he read her cherished magnum opus.

She could have sworn she heard a clock ticking. Or maybe that was her knees knocking.

He sighed. Not a good sign.

“A ghost story. Your father didn’t tell me it was a ghost story.” Each syllable was laden with disappointment.

She was determined not to give up hope. “It’s not, sir. It’s more like a story… with a ghost in it.”

She pointed at the manuscript with her ink-stained fingers. He pulled away. Undaunted, she said, “The ghost is just a metaphor, you see? For the past.”

“A metaphor.” He could not have sounded less enthusiastic. He read on a bit. “Nice handwriting. Firm loops.”

Oh, no. He hates it.

He put the manuscript down and rearranged it slowly, rather like a child’s nurse folding up a soiled nappy.

“So, Miss Cushing, how is your father?” he asked. “In good health, I hope?”

* * *

“He said it needed a love story. Can you believe that?”

Edith was incensed all over again. She leaned forward in her chair, which sat catty-corner to her father’s in the golden dining room of their home, where they were taking their evening meal together. It was sunset, and light spilled over the damask wallpaper and alabaster sconces. The silver serving dishes glittered.

“Everyone falls in love, dear,” he ventured. “Even women.” He was dressed for dinner, every hair on his head carefully combed, his beard immaculately trimmed. Though her father was nearly sixty, the pains he took bore fruit: he looked considerably younger.

“He said that just because I’m a woman,” she grumbled as the maids carried in elegant platters. “Why? Why must a woman always write about love? Stories of girls in search of the ideal husband—being saved by a dashing young prince? Fairy tales and lies.”

An expression she couldn’t read flittered across his face. Then he said, “Well, I’ll have a word with Ogilvie on Monday morning at the club.”

Edith huffed. “You most certainly will not. I will do this. Alone.”

The look he gave her was gentle, and she braced herself for his objections—which she had no doubt he would intend as fatherly concern and nothing more, but which could certainly not sway her from her decided course. Then he frowned slightly and leaned toward her, as if examining her under a microscope.

“When you met Ogilvie, were your fingers ink-stained like that?”

She grimaced, recalling the smudge on her forehead as well. She had only discovered it after her appointment. “I’m afraid so. It won’t come off.”

He brightened. “Aha.” Then he set a small package before her with a flourish. “I was hoping this would be a celebratory gift but…”

She opened it and lifted out a beautiful gold fountain pen. It was the most magnificent writing instrument she had ever seen, and evidence of his faith in—and support of—her ambition to become a writer. Deeply touched, she kissed his cheek. Though he was flustered, the color in his face assured her that he was equally pleased.

“I’m a builder, dear. If I know one thing, it’s the importance of the right tool for the job.”

“Actually, Father, I would like to type it in your office,” she informed him sweetly.

She almost missed his flash of disappointment as he regarded the gleaming pen, which was suddenly obsolete. “Type it?”

“I’m submitting it to The Atlantic Monthly,” she said. “I realize now that my handwriting is too feminine.”

“Too feminine?”

“It gives me away. I’ll sign it E.M. Cushing. That’ll keep them guessing.”

He looked pensive. “Without a doubt.”

CHAPTER THREE

THIS DAY IS mine.

Despite yesterday’s rejection, Edith was light on her feet. Her hopes buoyed her on confident wings. Once she had a fair hearing—her work read by someone who was not prejudiced against her gender—she was confident that publication would be hers.

She almost—but not quite—imagined how proud her mother would be if presented with a book her own daughter had written. But she held that thought at bay, refusing it a place to land. The image of that blackened hand on her arm, that stench, that horrible voice—

It was only a nightmare. I was mad with grief.

No, you weren’t. You know exactly—

She had arrived at last at her father’s busy engineering offices. Dominated by huge models of buildings and bridges encased in glass, the airy rooms with their high ceilings proved a beehive of activity as engineers, clerks, and assistants examined miniature models, executed blueprints and measured drawings, and conducted the vast business of Mr. Carter Cushing. Her father had built some of the finest buildings in Buffalo, and in many other cities as well. Buildings of stone, brick, and iron that would carry his name and his vision down through the centuries. He was as much an artist in his world as she hoped to become in her own—in her case, the world of books and stories.

To that end, she sat ensconced in the chair of her father’s secretary, her manuscript at her elbow, as she peered through her small round glasses at the alphabet keys, which were arranged in no discernable pattern. Hunting for each letter, it took a span of time to peck the title and opening line of the story. Several spans more to fill a page. Then, with a bit of coaching from the secretary, she touched the return lever and the carriage zipped across the top of the contraption with thrilling speed. Edith was delighted.

“It’ll take me all day, but it does make it look rather handsome, don’t you think?” she said.

The secretary busied herself with hefting a box file onto a shelf. Edith settled back to staring at the odd arrangement of letters on the keys when she became aware that there was some sort of shadow being thrown on the typewriter. She squinted, the merest bit vexed.

“Good morning, miss,” said a voice. Male, English.

She looked up.

The bluest eyes she had ever seen were focused on her. She blinked, riveted. The visitor’s face was chiseled, his dark hair neatly arranged, yet some curls had refused to be tamed. Her writer’s brain conjured words to describe him: astonishing, elegant, winning. He was dressed in a blue velvet suit that had at one time been resplendent—yes, another good word—perfectly cut to mold his slim build, but was now nearly threadbare at the cuffs. His ensemble did not speak of poverty, precisely, but he was certainly not well off. Yet he acknowledged her look with a sort of courtly grace that did speak of good manners and a cultivated upbringing.

Other words sprang to mind: uncommonly handsome.

She revealed none of this as she waited to see what he would say next. For her part, the secretary was quite breathless. The man also carried a box, wooden and polished, under his arm. It looked heavy; he would have made short work of the task.

“Forgive the interruption,” he said, his upper-class British accent falling tantalizingly on her American ears, “but I have an appointment with Mr. Carter Everett Cushing, Esquire.”

Her father, in other words.

“Goodness. With the great man himself?” Edith asked, assuming a bland tone. She was rather taken with him, but it was not considered proper for a lady to behave too warmly to a man she did not know. And on occasion, Edith had been known to behave properly.

“I’m afraid so.” His smile was a bit tentative and she realized that he was nervous. That only added to his attractiveness, as far as she was concerned. Dashing as he was, he was still human. She kept her eyes fastened on him as he produced a business card and presented it to her.

“Sir Thomas Sharpe, baronet,” she read aloud. Then it dawned on her that this was Eunice’s aristocrat. Her parasite. Good Lord, she was a crotchety misanthrope. She was the Elizabeth Bennett of her day. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s heroine had come to the exact same foregone conclusion about Mr. Darcy, who had been rakishly handsome and debonair—yet upper-class, and therefore worthy of Elizabeth’s middle-class contempt for a do-nothing snob.

“I will call him.” The secretary moved swiftly to do just that.

Sir Thomas Sharpe crooked his neck as he looked down at her desk.

“You’re not late, are you?” Edith asked. “He hates that.”

“Not at all. In fact, I’m a bit early.”

A man after my own heart. So to speak.

“Oh. I’m afraid he hates that, too.” She wasn’t certain why she was teasing him so. It didn’t matter; she was failing to get a rise out of him. His nervousness had dissipated. In fact, he seemed rather distracted. She was a bit crushed.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry. But—” he gestured at her manuscript, and she realized then that he’d craned his neck in order to read it “—this is a piece of fiction, is it not?”

She nodded, concealing her consternation. She wanted to explain that the ghost was a metaphor, and to assure him that she had already decided that it was just too silly for the heroine to fall in love with Cavendish on page one and she was going to change it back to the way it had been before Ogilvie had turned it down. She shouldn’t have listened to him, even if he was a famous publisher. Love stories were fairy tales and lies as far as she was concerned and… good Lord, he was reading more of it.

“Who are you transcribing this for?” he asked, genuinely interested. But she couldn’t tell if he was intrigued or horrified by the text on the page.

She decided to dodge his question. If he hated it, that would be altogether mortifying. “It’s to be sent to New York tomorrow. The Atlantic Monthly.”

He took that in. Read another page. “Well, whoever wrote this is quite good, don’t you think?”

Delighted, she tipped back her head, the better to read his reaction. “Is it?” she tested.

He shrugged as if to say, Isn’t it obvious to you that it’s good? “It’s captured my attention.”

He was being sincere. He truly liked it. He liked her book. Not since Alan had anyone read any of it… until Ogilvie. And Alan had listened carefully, but hadn’t provided commentary except to say things such as, “That’s a nice description of the countryside,” or, “I’m sorry, I’m confused. Is the ghost real or not?”

But Sir Thomas Sharpe, baronet, had pronounced it quite good. No doubt he’d attended superior boarding schools and studied at a great university such as Oxford. He probably had a vast library in his castle and had read Virgil in the original Latin. How could her little book compare?

Favorably, that was how. He had said so himself. She was galvanized. Here was a kindred spirit.

Should she confess? Why not?

“I wrote it. It’s mine.” She heard the pride in her voice.

He brightened measurably. His lips parted and he was about to say something more when her father’s deep voice boomed out.

“Sir Thomas Sharpe. Welcome to our fair city.”

Carter Cushing approached. As he regarded the Englishman, a cloud crossed his face, then vanished when he turned his attention to her.

“I see you’ve met my daughter, Edith.”

Edith enjoyed Sir Thomas’s flicker of surprise and smiled at the speechless man as her father escorted him toward the meeting room. The younger man carried his wooden box as if it were a precious object, and Edith determined to find out why he was there. Everything about him was immensely interesting. She rose from the desk, leaving her manuscript where it lay.

By then the two men had entered the meeting room. She peered through the open door and saw that some of the most prominent businessmen in Buffalo had taken places at the polished desks positioned in a circular arrangement. It was a high-profile gathering; she spotted Mr. William Ferguson, her father’s lawyer. All eyes were on young Sir Thomas Sharpe, who stood in the center. No wonder he’d been nervous. It was like facing a dozen Ogilvies.

“The Sharpe clay mines have been Royal Purveyors of the purest scarlet clay since 1796.” His voice was firm and authoritative, all traces of the jitters utterly vanished. He held up another wooden container, this one much smaller than the box. Inside lay a deep scarlet brick with some sort of seal on it. He passed it around to the august bewhiskered men, and each examined the intensely hued clay.

Intrigued, Edith walked into the room and shut the door after herself. Her father’s colleagues were used to her observing from the perimeter and paid her no mind. But Sir Thomas’s gaze flickered, and she was both abashed and pleased that she had proved a distraction.

“Excessive mining in the last twenty years caused most of our old deposits to collapse, which crippled our operations and endangered our ancestral home,” Sir Thomas continued.

He has an ancestral home. Just like Cavendish in my novel, Edith thought.

“You leeched the life out of the land, is that what you’re saying?” her father asked sharply. “Bled it dry—”

“No,” Sir Thomas protested, still quite calm. “New clay shales exist but have proved elusive to reach.”

Well said, Edith thought approvingly. Her father was even more intimidating than Ogilvie. She decided to observe Sir Thomas in action and learn what she could of the fine art of salesmanship. Authors often watched the world so that they could properly render it on the page.

However, during her musings on the subject of being more observant, she had missed a portion of Sir Thomas’s demonstration. He had opened the larger wooden box and pulled out a scale model of what Edith recognized from her many days in her father’s office as a mining drill. He had connected the drill to a little brass boiler and with a theatrical hiss of steam, the burnished brass levels and gears started moving. The drill spun. The miniature was charming, and clearly also quite impressive, for the men leaned forward as they studied it. Little buckets crept upward and she could just picture them scooping out ruby-red clay and depositing it on a wagon.

“This is a clay harvester of my own design,” Sir Thomas said. “It matches the output of a ten-man crew. Transports the clay upwards as it digs deep. This machine can revolutionize mining as we know it.”

The men began to applaud, and Edith was pleased for the earnest young aristocrat. What a clever inventor he was. Clever and handsome, then. Eunice was a lucky girl… though Edith doubted her impeding engagement to this man had anything to do with luck and everything to do with her mother’s ambitions. If she knew Mrs. McMichael, the lady had lain in wait for Sir Thomas at the British Museum and “happened” to engage him in some way that, while perhaps somewhat forward, would not have been considered indiscreet or ill-mannered. And the hours Eunice had likely spent primping just in case the meeting was successful would have been time well spent. She was a very beautiful young woman.

Then Edith noted that among all those present, her father was the only one not applauding. In fact, he was scowling.

“Turn it off,” he barked, then softened his command, “please. Who built that?”

Sir Thomas inclined his head. “I built and designed the model myself.”

I’ll bet he could build a more sensible typewriter, Edith thought. Honestly, the arrangement of the letters makes no sense at all.

In the ensuing silence, the other businessmen regarded her father, whose cold smile bespoke his skepticism.

“Have you tested it? Full scale?”

“I’m very close, sir, but with the funding—”

“So all you have is a toy and some fancy words,” her father interrupted.

Sir Thomas’s face fell, and Edith felt a rush of protective indignation on his behalf. Carter Cushing had every right to question him, of course, but his tone was quite biting. Dismissive. Just like Ogilvie.

Her father picked up a document that had been lying at his elbow and scrutinized it before he spoke again. “You have already tried—and failed—to raise capital in London, Edinburgh, Milan.”

The Englishman raised his brows just a bit, obviously surprised. “Yes, sir. That’s correct.”

Her father stood. “And now you’re here.” His voice held a sharper edge, and Edith unconsciously pushed away from the wall. However, she was in no position to argue whatever point her father was about to make. This was Sir Thomas’s battle, and if she spoke up, it would only embarrass him.

“Correct again,” Sir Thomas replied.

“The men at this table, all of us, came up through honest, hard work. Almost all of us. Mr. Ferguson is a lawyer, but even he can’t help that.”

It was a tired joke, but the titans of Buffalo industry laughed anyway. They gave each other looks that indicated that Cushing had a point. They had “come up” through honest, hard work. By implication, Sir Thomas had not. The men in this room held the same inverted snobbery Edith had held herself until very recently—perhaps an hour ago at most.

The titled, very English Sir Thomas stood alone in a room filled with hardscrabble Americans who put stock in results and not in charming presentations. Edith sensed that the tide was turning in favor of her father and his disdain, though of what—Sir Thomas’s invention or the man himself—she wasn’t certain.

“I started out a steel worker, raising buildings so that I could own them,” her father went on. He approached Sir Thomas with raised hands. “Rough. They reflect who I am. Now, you, sir…”

He gripped Sir Thomas’s hands; the younger man’s back stiffened slightly, and Edith recalled reading that English people were more standoffish than their American counterparts. Perhaps he didn’t like to be touched. She wondered what it would be like, however, to touch his fingertips. Perhaps even his unsmiling lips.

And she should not be thinking of such things.

“You have the softest hands I’ve ever felt,” her father announced. “In America, we bank on effort, not privilege. That is how we built this country.”

But he is being unfair, Edith thought. Sir Thomas told him that he designed and built the model himself. It must have taken some doing to visualize and construct such a revolutionary device. It occurred to her that he was a creative person like herself—and he too was about to be rejected.

Her father moved away from Sir Thomas. The baronet’s deep blue eyes flared with passion, and he raised his chin.

“I am here with all that I possess, sir.” He spoke most respectfully and with humility, a counterpoint to her father’s patronizing, judgmental tone. “A name, a patch of land, and the will to make it yield. The least you can grant me is the courtesy of your time and the chance to prove to you, and these fine gentleman, that my will, dear sir, is, at the very least, as strong as yours.”

Well done, so very well said, Edith thought, and as Sir Thomas glanced toward her, she sensed that it was time for her to withdraw. Sir Thomas was intent on standing his ground, and perhaps he might feel his speech constrained by a lady’s presence. He was in total command of himself and fully prepared to stand up to her father. Many other men had withered in the attempt.

He is not going to wither. I can feel it. A shock jittered up her spine. I have strength of will, too. I am like him.

What she felt was more than that. It was something she had only read about, and before now, never believed in. She blushed and turned away. As she left the room, she began to tremble, and it took all her own strength not to turn back for one last gaze at Eunice McMichael’s suitor.

CHAPTER FOUR

EDITH LOOKED OUT on a great and dirty city. Dickens would have termed it thus, a city saturated with gloom and soot. Slanting torrents of rain turned the streets of Buffalo into fields of mud as thick as clay.

Huddled in their greatcoats, under umbrellas, pedestrians hurried past Cushing Manor, anxious to avoid the deluge, while inside the Cushings’ servants turned on the gas lamps. A warm glow emanated from the prosperous redbrick building, dissolving into the gloaming.

Edith wore a mustard-yellow dressing gown as she fondly regarded her father, while he scrutinized his reflection in the mirror. He looked dapper in his tails, and his waistcoat was her favorite gold one. His birthday was in a couple of weeks, and she had a wonderful surprise planned for him—a bound presentation book of watercolor sketches of his most important building projects. It was being completed now.

“I need a corset,” he said with a sigh as he appraised the slight girth of his middle.

His vanity touched her because of the vulnerability it revealed. She went to him and tied his bow tie.

“No, you don’t.”

“I wish you’d change your mind and come along tonight. Mrs. McMichael’s gone to a lot of trouble.” He grunted. “Little Lord Fauntleroy will be there.”

She almost chuckled at his choice of names, but didn’t. He had been too stern with Sir Thomas, and she didn’t want him to think she shared his contempt. Far from it.

“You mean Thomas Sharpe?” she said pointedly.

“Sir Thomas Sharpe, baronet. Apparently he has taken an interest in young Eunice.”