“Could you relax a little?” he said, directing a winning smile at someone Zaria didn’t bother to take note of. “You’re meant to like me, you know. I’m not leading you to the gallows.”
“I am not interested,” she muttered through her teeth, “in pretending to be your fiancée. Can’t I be your—your cousin, or something?”
This got Kane’s attention. As they passed through a turnstile, helooked down at her, brows drawing together in abject horror. “No, you may not be mycousin.”
“And why not?”
He inclined his chin to where a man stood at the Exhibition’s entrance, laughing loudly with two people who must have been organizers. Zaria recognized him immediately. He was the chap Kane had been speaking to a short time earlier. Ambrose Taylor, if she recalled correctly. A member of the Royal Commission.
“If you’re going to help me pull this off,” Kane purred in Zaria’s ear, “you’re going to have to work on your acting.”
“What’s my name again?”
“Eleanor.”
“And yours?”
“Theodore,” he replied, turning that sickly charming grin on her again. Why was he alwaysgrinning? “But my friends can call me Theo.”
“In that case, I’ll stick to Theodore.”
Kane uttered a mocking laugh, though it turned into the real thing as they approached Taylor and his company. There was another man with them now. He was portly with a rather bulbous nose, deep-set eyes, and a beard that started where his chin ought to have stopped. Something about the way he held himself made Zaria suspect he was important.
“Mister Cole!” Kane disentangled his arm from Zaria’s, flashing teeth as he extended a hand toward the newcomer. “An absolute honor. I didn’t realize you and Mister Taylor were acquainted.”
Zaria’s heart skipped in her chest as she fit the pieces together. Henry Cole, chief administrator of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition? She wouldn’t have recognized the man, but she knewhe was a rather prominent civil servant who’d been instrumental in planning the event.
Cole drew himself up tall. He did not, Zaria was unnerved to see, appear won over by Kane’s overindulgent greeting, though he allowed the handshake nonetheless. “And you are?”
“Master Wright,” Taylor was quick to inject, giving a half bow as he gestured in Kane’s direction. “And his charming future wife.”
Zaria felt heat climb her face. The next moment Kane had set a hand on the small of her back, and she bit the inside of her cheek so hard that she tasted blood.
“Please,” Kane said, still addressing Cole, “call me Theo. I’m apprentice to Charles Fox—I’m sure you’re familiar. How wonderful it is to stand before this magnificent feat of architecture and engineering.” He spread his arms wide to indicate the palace. “And may I offer you and the rest of the commission my congratulations? You have truly outdone yourselves in organizing this event so quickly.”
Cole considered Kane the way someone might consider a plate of food before deciding whether or not they wanted to eat it. “I didn’t know Mister Fox had an apprentice.”
His demeanor set Zaria on edge. She shifted her weight, fearing he might somehow mark Kane as not, in fact, being Theodore Wright. Kane flashed another easy smile.
“That’s the rub, isn’t it? We must work in the shadow of the more accomplished man until we possess the skill required to rise through the ranks. In this case, however, working under men such as yourself and Mister Fox is no hardship at all. It’s truly a privilege. Although,” Kane added, “I daresay you don’t need to be told about the value of hard work.”
“I certainly don’t,” Cole said gruffly, but Zaria could see that hewas softening. “Well, I won’t hold you up any longer. Taylor will take your invitations. Enjoy yourself.”
Kane’s teeth flashed again. “I appreciate it, sir. God bless.”
He managed to make it sound genuine as he shook Cole’s hand once more, and Zaria forced her expression into what she hoped was reminiscent of a smile.
Then Cole was mercifully gone, his short stature engulfed by the slew of patrons.
Taylor took the two slips of paper Kane procured from his pocket. “Thank you very much, sir. Ma’am.” With a wink, he indicated that they should pass through the next turnstile.
And the Great Exhibition opened up before them.
The interior of the Crystal Palace was beyond imagining. The impossibly high ceilings were paneled in the same glass as the walls, allowing the sunlight to stream in, and mezzanine-like structures jutted out to form a second story. Above it all, a glass dome arched to make room for several lush elm trees. Once Zaria managed to tear her gaze downward, she noticed a towering pink crystal fountain splashing joyfully in the center, the noise a backdrop to the excited chatter of the wealthy patrons who surrounded it.
The building’s iron framework was visible everywhere she looked, but it didn’t detract from the experience. How could it? For around her werecolors—more than she’d known existed. Red banners declared the names of companies and their respective countries. Blue woven carpets hung from the walls. Gilded furniture and ivory statuettes sat beside printed glassware. There were carriages and clothing, art and animal skins, pottery and porcelain items. Andmachines! For manufacturing, for science, for transportation and medical applications.
It seemed humanity’s creative genius had been condensed intoa single space bursting at the seams with ideas and veritableworth. It was so overwhelming, so impossible, so… absurd. That moment of wonder shattered to the ground around her, a delicate glass orb slipping from clumsy fingers. Once she managed to digest the sight, she saw it for what it was: audacious. The empire’s flagrant boast. The Exhibition had been promoted as a unification of sorts, but Zaria suspected the goal was unification only insofar as it remained inherently, inextricably British. And yet how many of these things weren’t British at all? How many had been taken by force from faraway places in the name of expanding an empire? While they were building the Crystal Palace, filling it with priceless items, how many people in the slums had starved?
