Free Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams

helplessly. “My father— You must know who I am. I can’t just disappear.”
    The doctor turned and resumed his journey across the deck to the ladder, where his tender lay bobbing in the
Isolde
’s lee. “My dear girl, this is nothing that young Créouville cannot explain. He is a clever fellow. No doubt he has already put about a suitable story.”
    â€œBut I don’t understand. What’s going on? What sort of trouble is this?”
    â€œI don’t know what you mean,” he said virtuously.
    â€œYes, you do. What sort of trouble gets a man shot in the night like that, everything a big secret, and what . . . what does my
brother
have to do with any of it? And why the devil are you smiling that way, like a cat?”
    â€œBecause I am astonished, Mademoiselle, and not a little filled with admiration, that you have undertaken this little adventure with no knowledge whatever of its meaning.”
    We had reached the ladder. I grabbed him by the arm and turned him around. “Then perhaps you might begin by explaining it to me.”
    He shook his head and patted my cheek. His eyes were kind, and the smile had disappeared. “I cannot, of course. But when the patient is a little more recovered, it’s my professional opinion that you have every right to ask him yourself.”
    5.
    The next day, Stefan roared for his crutches, an excellent sign, but I wouldn’t let him have them. I made him eat two eggs for breakfast and a little more beef broth, and he grumbled and ate. I told him that if he were very good and rested quietly, I would let him try out the crutches tomorrow. He glared with his salt caramel eyes and directed me to go to the
Isolde
’s library and bring him some books. He wrote down their titles on a piece of paper.
    The weather was hot again today, the sun like a blister in the fierce blue sky, and every porthole was open to the cooling breeze off the water. I passed along the silent corridor to the grand staircase, a sleek modern fusion of chrome and white marble, filled with seething Mediterranean light, and the library was exactly where Stefan said it should be: the other side of the main salon.
    It was locked, but Stefan had given me the key. I opened the door expecting the usual half-stocked library of the yachting class: the shelves occupied by a few token volumes and a great many valuable
objets
of a maritime theme, the furniture arranged for style instead of a comfortable hours-long submersion between a pair of cloth covers.
    But the
Isolde
’s library wasn’t like the rest of the ship. There was nothing sleek about it, nothing constructed out of shiny material. The walnut shelves wrapped around the walls, stuffed with books, newer ones and older ones, held in place by slim wooden rails in case of stormy seas. A sofa and a pair of armchairs dozed near the portholes, and a small walnut desk sat on the other side, next to a cabinet that briefly interrupted the flow of shelving. I thought, Now, here is a room I might like to live in.
    I looked down at the paper in my hand. Goethe,
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
; Locke,
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
. Dumas
père, Le vicomte de Bragelonne, ou Dix ans plus tard
.
    When I returned to Stefan’s cabin a half hour later, he was sitting up against the pillows and staring at the porthole opposite, which was open to the breeze. The rooftops of the fort shifted in and out of the frame, nearly white in the sunshine. It was too hot for blankets, and he lay in his pajamas on the bed I had made expertly underneath him that morning, tight as a drum. “Here are your books,” I said.
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œHow are you feeling?”
    â€œLike a bear in a cage.”
    â€œYou are certainly
acting
like a bear.”
    He looked up from the books. “I’m sorry.”
    â€œI’ve had worse patients. It’s good that you’re a bear. Better a bear than a