Free Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams Page A

sick little worm.”
    â€œPoor Mademoiselle de Créouville. I understand your brother has ordered you to stay with me and nurse me back to health.”
    â€œNot in so many words.” I paused. “Not in any words at all, really. He sent over a few clothes and a toothbrush yesterday, with the doctor,but there was no note of any kind. I still haven’t the faintest idea who you are, or what I’m doing here.”
    He frowned. “Do you need one?”
    I folded my arms and sank into the armchair next to the bed. His pajamas were fine silky cotton and striped in blue, and one lapel was still folded endearingly on the inside, as if belonging to a little boy who had dressed himself too hastily. The blueness brought out the bright caramel of his eyes and, by some elusive trick, made his chest seem even sturdier than before. His color had returned, pink and new; his hair was brushed; his thick jaw was smooth and smelled of shaving soap. You would hardly have known he was hurt, except for the bulky dressing that distended one blue-striped pajama leg. “What do you think?” I said.
    He reached for the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. “You are a nurse. You see before you an injured man. You have a cabin, a change of clothes, a dozen men to serve you. What more is necessary for an obedient young lady who knows it is impertinent to ask questions?”
    I opened my mouth to say something indignant, and then I saw the expression on his face as he lit the cigarette between his lips with a sharp-edged gold lighter and tossed the lighter back on the nightstand. The end of the cigarette flared orange. I said, “You
do
realize you’re at my mercy, don’t you?”
    â€œI have known that for some time, yes. Since you first walked into that miserable boathouse in your white dress and stained it with my blood.”
    â€œOh, you’re flirting again. Anyway, I returned the favor, didn’t I?”
    â€œYes. We are now bound at the most elemental level, aren’t we? I believe the ancients would say we have taken a sacred oath, and are bound together for eternity.” He reached for the ashtray and placed it on the bed, next to his leg, and his eyes danced.
    â€œIf that’s your strategy for conquering my virtue, you’ll have to try much harder.”
    Stefan’s face turned more serious. He placed his hand with thecigarette on the topmost book, the Goethe, nearly covering it, and said, “What I mean by all that, of course, is
thank you
, Mademoiselle. Because there are really no proper words to describe my gratitude.”
    I leaned forward and turned the lapel of his pajamas right side out. “Since we are now bound together for eternity,” I said, “you may call me Annabelle.”
    6.
    Of course, my full name was much longer.
    I was christened Annabelle Marie-Elisabeth, Princesse de Créouville, a title bought for me by my mother, who married Prince Edouard de Créouville with her share of the colossal fortune left to her and her sister by their father, a New England industrialist. Textiles, I believe. I never met the man who was my grandfather. My father was impoverished, as European nobility generally was, and generously happy to make the necessary bargain.
    At least my mother was beautiful. Not beautiful like a film star—on a woman with less money, her beauty would be labeled
handsome
—but striking enough to set her apart from most of the debutantes that year. So she married her prince, she gave birth to Charles nine months later and me another four years after that, and then,
ooh la la,
caught her husband in bed with Peggy Guggenheim and asked for a divorce. (
But everybody’s doing it,
my father protested, and my mother said,
Adultery or Peggy Guggenheim?
and my father replied,
Both.
) So that was the end of that, though in order to secure my father’s cooperation in the divorce (he was Catholic and so was the marriage)