Free The Edge of the Fall by Kate Williams

smiled back, shyly. She must have forgiven her, Celia thought. She’d apologise properly later.
    â€˜Now, you two,’ Rudolf said. ‘I’ve got an idea. I have been looking into finishing schools. I think it would benefit both of you to go.’
    â€˜No!’ said Celia, just as Louisa said, ‘Yes!’
    Rudolf raised his eyebrow. Verena started talking about flower-arranging and learning to be a lady. ‘There are a few excellent ones I have read of in London,’ she said. ‘But Miss Trammell’s is the best.’
    â€˜Those places teach you how to get a husband,’ Celia said hotly. ‘I don’t want a husband.’
    â€˜I’d love to go,’ said Louisa. ‘Some of the girls at school were talking about going to that sort of thing. But Mama didn’t believe in too much education, you know.’
    Celia looked sideways at Louisa. Perhaps this would be the way to speak to her cousin, they could really talk on the train back and forth. She looked at Rudolf. ‘What does this school involve? Do we have to go every day?’
    â€˜Not every day, no. Two days a week. You’d stay in London. And as for Lady Deerhurst’s thoughts, things have changed,’ said Rudolf. ‘Girls need education.’
    â€˜Is table-arranging education?’ Celia knew: she was too clumsy for it, too lanky.
    Rudolf picked up his knife. ‘They are about teaching you to be rounded . It would be good for you, Celia.’
    â€˜I don’t want to go,’ said Celia. Everything anyone said madeher jumpy, she wanted to shift places and move, not sit still. How could they, she thought, sit still, talk of scones or flowers or the rest of it? People had been dying. ‘I wish I could travel instead.’
    Louisa gazed at her, wide-eyed. ‘Where will you go?’
    Celia shook her head. And then, speaking before she even realised what she was saying, the words were out. ‘Germany.
    â€˜Germany,’ she repeated, and sat up, looking at Rudolf. ‘I would like to go to the Black Forest.’ Those childhood days with her cousins Johann and Hilde, swimming in the streams, eating bread and cheese at Aunt Lotte’s heavy table, Uncle Heinrich, Rudolf’s cousin, carving trinkets out of wood. The house had been her father’s family summer home, when he’d been a boy, when he and Heinrich had played there together.
    Rudolf dropped his knife to his plate. It clattered. ‘It’s hardly a place for a holiday.’
    â€˜I mean it, Papa. Like we used to do, before the war. You always said we could visit our cousins, once everything was over.’
    Verena coughed. Rudolf straightened up. ‘Yes, well, you were a child then. I hardly think they’re in a fit state to receive you. There’s no money.’ They’d received three letters since the end of the war. Johann had come back injured and they’d lost half their money in a war investment scheme.
    â€˜Your cousin was on the other side ,’ said Louisa.
    â€˜Maybe they’d feel better if I went. I could take them things from here. I want to go. Then, on the way back, I might go to the battlefields of France. I’ve read a lot about the tours they run there.’
    â€˜Why anyone would want to go to the battlefields, I don’t know,’ said Rudolf. ‘Why can’t they leave the past in the past?’
    â€˜I don’t think it’s wise,’ said Verena. ‘I don’t think anyone is travelling to Germany these days. Is it even possible, husband?’
    â€˜I believe people are travelling on business. So she could . . . But no. It might be dangerous.’
    â€˜They’d think I was German.’
    Rudolf shook his head. ‘You can barely speak it.’
    â€˜I can. Well enough. Anyway, I’d be with Hilde and Johann. So no one would know about me.’
    Rudolf shook his head again. ‘Impossible.’
    Celia stood