Free The Storms of War by Kate Williams

Gertie or Gwen King or anyone like them at Stoneythorpe, fingering and mocking her books, wanting to ride Silver. Verena wished her to make friends so she could stay with them, meet their brothers and then one day find a husband. But Celia didn’t want to pass the summers in their houses. She wanted to be at Stoneythorpe, with Tom.
    Verena touched her hair. ‘I just don’t understand why Jonathan would leave so suddenly.’
I don’t know,
Celia wanted to cry.
You’rethe mother! I wish we could go back to the days when you were all powerful, knew everything.
    As if she had heard, Verena snapped tall. ‘Anyway, I have a task for you. I’m sending Thompson to town to collect some more elaborate gifts. He was supposed to be wrapping the presents for the lucky dip today. I wondered if you might do it?’
    ‘Of course!’
    Verena ushered her to the parlour, where there was a pile of presents and some crackled tissue paper and ribbon. ‘Do be careful. I asked Emmeline but she has the dressmaker with her.’ She picked up a box of sweets and wrapped it in paper and ribbon, showing Celia how to tie the neat bow on the top.
    There was a knock, and Smithson appeared at the door. ‘Madam, Miss Wilton wishes to discuss a matter with you.’
    Verena sighed. ‘It is impossible. I simply cannot settle to anything. Now, Celia, do try to leave them looking tidy. I’m trusting you.’
    She shut the door behind her.
Don’t think of Jonathan,
Celia told herself.
Think about something else!
    Celia’s father liked to tell them, usually at Christmas and on her mother’s birthday, about how hard he had tried to gain Verena’s affections. They had met at a ball, and Rudolf had gone to visit her family every Wednesday afternoon in London, and then followed them to Norfolk.
    ‘Your mother was the girl for me,’ he was fond of saying. ‘I simply had to persuade her. Lady Deerhurst said to me, “I have not spent years on my daughter’s education and finished her in Paris, only for her to marry into canned meat!” But I knew I would win them all round in the end.’ Celia had seen a daguerreotype of her mother as a bride, delicate and smiling, her hair a great nest on her head. ‘Well,’ Verena said once, ‘the pictures make it look more dignified. Cousin Sarah had a cold and sniffed all the way through the ceremony and the photographs. And my corset was so tight I could barely breathe.’
    Last time they had visited Grandmother Deerhurst had been two years ago, in the little house she lived in near the estate. Therehad been many more photographs of Celia’s English cousins, Matthew and Louisa, than of the de Witts. Verena had complained and asked what was wrong with her children. Since then Lady Deerhurst had not issued any invitations. Verena shrugged and said she was too angry about the Kaiser and would get over it one day.
    Grandmother Deerhurst was tall and stern, her bosom jangling with jet beads. When she spoke to Celia, she looked at her through an eyeglass and talked thinly of the different dress of girls in her day. Celia could not imagine her being won round. But then she could not imagine her mother or father as young as she was – or her father ever having to fight for anything.
    ‘I think my mother believed Papa was going to whip me away to Germany and I would never return,’ said Verena, smiling. Celia thought that her mother liked that, the idea of being taken away entirely. And yet she did return, numerous times, for Verena often mentioned the Deerhursts, meeting the Queen as a debutante, reminding them that she was an aristocrat. When Sir Hugh proposed, she had said to them all at the table, ‘He saw the
right blood,
that is it.’
    Celia sat on the floor. She took the crackled tissue paper and the ribbon and began sorting through the presents. There were cones of sweets, boxes of nuts, two little brown bears, a skipping rope, a wooden top and stick. For one lucky boy there was a toy train engine, and for one