Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization by Nancy Holder Page B

what could she call them—visitations? nightmares?—were the product of a creative imagination. But what if Mama really had been there?
    Her blood ran cold.
    Those pictures aren’t proof
, she thought, perhaps a little desperately.
The process of making the images could have been manipulated. And I don’t really know where Alan stands on the subject. He is a scientist of the eye, of vision, and the repair of distortion. He said that Conan Doyle believed, but he did not say that he did. For him, this may not be more than an interesting puzzle.
    She thought to pursue the topic, but another patient was announced. And it was with some frustration, but more relief, that she took her leave.
    * * *
    In his grand boardroom, Carter Cushing had convened a group of geologists to observe Sir Thomas’s machine. The Englishman’s miniature was rattling away, and he had brought a topographical model of Allerdale Hall complete with hills and valleys, and crowned with a model of his house. The geologists were agog.
    “The new deposits lie right beneath and around the house,” Sir Thomas elaborated, “in this stratum here—the reddest clay. The purest. And with enough ore in it to make it steel-hard after baking.”
    Cushing watched as Sir Thomas managed the questions and took every opportunity to put forward his plans.
    William Ferguson came up beside him and murmured, “I don’t know about you, but I am impressed.”
    “I must say that so am I,” Cushing replied.
But not in the same way. Most definitely not.
    Sir Thomas smiled at him, having overheard the exchange. Cushing decided to make the next move.
    “Gentlemen, we should continue our discussions tonight at dinner. At my house,” he said warmly, returning Sharpe’s smile. But his mood was anything but warm; he felt positively glacial. “Who knows? We may have a toast to make.”
    The group broke up and walked in twos and threes out of the room. His secretary drew him aside, and there he found Mr. Holly with the additional document he had asked him to acquire. He perused it. So. It was true.
    “Well done, Sir Thomas,” Ferguson said to Sharpe as he passed by him on his way out. “Well done.”
    Not so fast
, Cushing thought grimly.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    G UESTS MILLED ; SERVANTS bustled. Dinner at Cushing Manor was to be a grand affair. The fragrant scents of meat and wine tantalized Thomas’s senses as he and Lucille prepared to enter the dining room. The atmosphere was charged with the same excitement that had accompanied his demonstration this afternoon, and he knew that, at last, success was to be his.
    Edith’s home was lovely, so different from their own. Yellow light gleamed from the candles; gas lamps shone through panels of stained glass. It was the palace of a fairy princess, and Thomas could well envision a younger Edith and her mother reading stories, blond heads knocked together as they pored over pictures embellished with all the colors of a butterfly’s wings.
    We are going to get the funding from these good men of Buffalo
, Thomas thought.
There is no need to go elsewhere.
    And then there she was, Edith, golden and glowing like the sun. Romeo had said the same of Juliet; that love had been doomed, but for them—
    Beside him, Lucille murmured in his ear, “Give her the ring.”
    The Sharpe garnet no longer graced his sister’s hand. He remembered how it had gleamed on her long slender finger when she had played the piano at the McMichaels’ ball. It had been meant for Eunice, but once he had met Edith, he had known in his soul that Eunice had not been the proper choice. He knew Lucille was not entirely convinced that Edith was better, and that she had only acquiesced because she loved him so much.
    Now as his sister moved apart from him, he felt a twinge of guilt, for he had not been entirely honest with her. He would give the ring to Edith, oh, he would, but not in the manner they had imagined. Not for that reason. Life was new for him. The sun had