May 1, 1851 London, England
The iron arm of the turnstile ratchets as Beatrix pushes through it. She follows the crowd of people ahead of her. Organ music drifts to her ears from somewhere up above, merry and bright and just loud enough to hear over the excited murmur of voices.
A man in a black top hat offers Beatrix a pamphlet map of the exhibit hall for the price of tuppence, but she politely declines. She wants to explore the world under one grand glass roof. She wants to get lost.
To her left, crimson signs proudly display the names Trinidad and Bahamas, Western Australia, and New Zealand, in bold white lettering, hanging over glass displays of colorful fruit, tortoiseshell crafts, and a life-size carved figurehead meant for the prow of a ship.
To her right, the Tunisians have assembled a traditional bazaar, filled with dresses and blankets, carpets and drapes, all in rich, colorful patterns.
Straight ahead, an elm tree spreads its canopy of leaves under plate glass and cast iron instead of sky.
Beatrix can’t help but stare. She has never seen a tree inside a building before. Then again, she’s never seen anything like the building the tree is growing inside, either.
The Crystal Palace is a modern marvel. At least three times the size of St. Paul’s, the newspapers have proclaimed it the largest building in the world.
Made of glass and iron, with an arched and vaulted roof, it sparkles like one of Queen Victoria’s diamonds in the midmorning sun.
Even the tiered fountain bubbling away next to her is made of gleaming cut glass.
Judging by the crowd gathered around it, she’s not the only one who finds it impressive.
She searches their faces for a familiar one.
Twenty-seven years ago, before Oliver left her on the bank of the Danube River, the moonlight shimmering silver across its surface, he gave her this date, this place, and a single instruction: Meet me under the elm tree.
He whispered it into her ear, their secret.
With barely any distance between them, she couldn’t miss the glint in his eye—the one that meant either he was up to trouble or she was in trouble or both.
She told him there were an awful lot of elm trees in Hyde Park.
He smiled and said she couldn’t miss it.
“Good morning, Miss Lancourt.” She turns toward the voice she would recognize anywhere. Oliver lifts his top hat and bows his head. He makes a charming gentleman.
Beatrix suppresses a smile. “And a good morning to you, Mr. Rhodes.”
He offers her his arm. “Let’s go travel the world, shall we?”
Beatrix loops her arm through his and her heart skips at his closeness. “Where do we begin?” Her eyes dart between the exhibit signs and bright flags hanging from the gallery above her.
“Anywhere you want.” Something about the way he says it sends a shiver through her.
They spend the next hours in India, where a stuffed elephant displays an ornate howdah on its back, and Canada, where mounted moose heads stare down at them with glassy eyes.
They step back in time into the medieval court, filled with Gothic candelabras and furniture, and explore a gallery of natural minerals and stones from all around Britain.
They see an entire exhibit of fireplaces; another of woolen, cotton, and linen textiles; displays of agricultural machinery, furniture, musical instruments, mechanical toys, and medical tools.
A model of the docks at Liverpool, complete with 1,500 tiny ships.
The glass lens of a lighthouse. A fountain filled with cologne-scented water.
A printing press that can print a thousand copies of the London Times in an hour, several full-size locomotives that have been pulled into the Crystal Palace by a team of two dozen horses, and a machine called the “Tempest Prognosticator,” which claims to predict oncoming storms with the aid of bell-ringing leeches.
Oliver pauses beneath an enormous telescope. “How about a break before we see the rest of the world?”
“A break would be lovely,” Beatrix agrees, and he guides her through a gate into the refreshment court.
They claim an iron bench under an elm, this one with open sky above it. Beatrix is glad to have a seat for a moment. She pulls her sunflower-yellow shawl tighter around her shoulders and smooths down her white skirt.
“What would you like?” he asks.
“Surprise me,” she says, and a ghost of a smile crosses his lips.
When Oliver returns, it’s not with a feast but with a Banbury cake and a bottle of ginger beer for each of them.
“Sorry, I thought this was supposed to be cake, but I got a miniature pie?” He hands her a warm, fruit-filled pastry sprinkled with glittering sugar.
Beatrix laughs as he sits down next to her, examining the confection. “Try it. It’s better than a garden snail, I promise.”
Oliver takes a bite and—mouth full of flaky crust and molten currants—mumbles something about it being the best not-cake he’s ever tasted. Beatrix devours hers.
Oliver uncorks his ginger beer. “What do you think so far?”
“It’s all a bit… strange,” Beatrix says. “Like I’m in an odd dream where everything keeps changing and things don’t make sense. But in a nice way.”
“Like Alice when she visited Wonderland,” Oliver says.
“Like what?”
Oliver’s eyes light up in realization. “I almost forgot!” He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out his journal. He slips out a folded page and hands it to Beatrix. “The book list.”
She takes the paper from him. The list is extensive, hundreds of titles long.
Oliver leans closer, reading over her shoulder.
She catches the woodsy scent she always associates with him, and her stomach flutters.
He points to an entry written in black ink and blocky letters.
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, November 1865.
It’s a children’s book about a girl who falls down a rabbit hole into a land full of things from her imagination. ”
Beatrix scans the rest of the page. “How long did this take you to make?”
“A week?” Oliver guesses. “Researching this stuff isn’t as hard as you’d think, in my time.”
“Thank you,” Beatrix says. Her heart swells at the gesture, at the thought of Oliver spending any of his spare time on her. “Truly.”
“Maybe I’ll read them, too,” he muses. “Like a really long-distance book club.”
Beatrix tucks the paper carefully away in her pocket.
She takes a sip of her ginger beer and, sitting inside a palace of glass next to a man from the future, marvels at her real-life Wonderland.
She wonders what else people will think up, how else they will change the world.
One strange, fantastical idea at a time.
Oliver offers her his hand, and she takes it. “Come on, we still have the rest of the world to explore.”
They wander through the smaller exhibits of Greece and Persia, Spain and Portugal, then move on to France, with the largest of the foreign displays. Both sides of the aisle are full of the finest French porcelain and tapestries, furniture and paintings.
The American display is sparse in comparison.
There is a bald eagle made of plaster and a sculpture, larger than Beatrix, made entirely of Goodyear rubber that doesn’t look much like anything.
They cross the model iron bridge arm in arm and watch Samuel Colt demonstrate a revolving pistol.
But the heart of the exhibit is a marble statue of a woman wearing nothing but chains, standing on a rotating platform, concealed under a crimson velvet canopy.
There is no shortage of marble nudes on display around the exhibition, but the Greek Slave is the only one hidden behind a curtain.
Beatrix suspects the air of mystery has added to the sculpture’s allure.
It scandalizes everyone at the exhibition except for Oliver, who is instead mortified by the German exhibit of taxidermy kittens having a tea party.
They turn around at the end of the foreign hall, but instead of continuing down the next row of exhibits to visit Norway and Sweden and Denmark, Oliver guides Beatrix past Belgium’s enormous sculpture of a knight on horseback.
He gestures to a wide staircase. “There’s something I want to make sure you see, up in the gallery.”
Her heart skips, and she follows him up the steps. He stops on the landing. “Close your eyes.”
“What, here? On the stairs?”
He offers her his arm. “Don’t worry, I’ll guide you.”
Beatrix loops her arm through his and closes her eyes. She lifts her skirt and takes careful steps when he tells her to. Slowly, together, they reach the top.
“Can I open them?” she asks.
“Not yet.” Oliver guides her over even flooring. It’s quieter than the exhibits downstairs, the air cooler, and she can hear the hollow echo of her boot heels on the wood. Oliver drops her arm, and for a moment, she is alone. He takes her by the shoulders and positions her just so.
“There,” he says, a note of triumph in his voice. “Now you can open them.”
Beatrix opens her eyes and gasps.
Swathes of heavy fabric dyed as black as the night sky hang from the ceiling and drape down to the floor, blocking the sunlight from shining through the clear walls and vaulted roof of the Crystal Palace.
Instead, the light streams through panels of stained glass nestled between the dark cloths—large and small, arched and square, rectangular and even round, like the old rose window at St. Paul’s.
All of it exquisite in its color and detail.
All of it the most beautiful thing Beatrix has ever seen.
Oliver stands just behind her shoulder. “Do you like it?”
But the sight has stolen her breath away. She can’t find the words to tell him all that she is feeling—more than she has felt in centuries.
“Bea?”
She turns and kisses him. Her mouth meets his, and for a single, thundering heartbeat, Oliver stands frozen under her touch. And then his lips part and he kisses her back. Warmth surges through her.
He pulls away. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Heat rushes to her cheeks.
“It’s not you,” he quickly adds. “I made a mistake.” He winces at his fumbling words. “Not you.”
He sinks onto a thinly padded bench across from a triptych of stained glass. He stares over the edge of the railing, though Beatrix isn’t sure he sees the crowd below them, moving through the exhibits like colorful ants. She pulls her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
Oliver pulls his gaze from the milling crowd, but he won’t look her in the eye. “In Venice, I told you I wanted more time to do everything.” He looks up at her, his eyes stormy with doubt and guilt and something darker. “I didn’t tell you why.”
Beatrix swallows down her fear. “Why?”
He slips his journal from inside his coat and pulls a worn piece of paper from between the pages. It reminds her of the poem from the Thames, the one she folded and unfolded until it fell apart into nothing. He offers it to her. She opens it along the well-worn creases.
“What is this?” She tries to focus on the words, tries to make them make sense. But they won’t. They can’t.
“My obituary.”