Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization Read Online Free Page B

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

    E DITH 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