Читать книгу Along the Infinite Sea: Love, friendship and heartbreak, the perfect summer read - Beatriz Williams, Beatriz Williams - Страница 23

I had sent a note for Charles with the departing doctor, in the small hours of the morning, and I expected my brother any moment to arrive on the yacht, to assure himself of Stefan’s survival and to bring me home.

But lunchtime came and went, the disheveled blonde departed, and though someone brought me a tray of food, and a bowl of hot broth for Stefan, Charles never appeared.

Stefan slept. At six o’clock, a boat hailed the deck and the doctor’s head popped over the side, followed by his bag. The day had been warm, and the air was still hot and laden with moisture. “How is our patient this evening?” he asked.

“Much better.” I turned and led him down the hallway to Stefan’s commodious stateroom. “He’s slept most of the day and had a little broth.” I didn’t mention the woman.

“Excellent, excellent. Sleep is the best thing for him. Pulse? Temperature?”

“All normal. The pulse is slow, but not alarmingly so.”

“To be expected. He is an active man. Well, well,” he said, ducking through the door, “how is our intrepid hero, eh?”

Stefan was awake, propped up on his pillows. He shot the doctor the kind of look that parents send each other when children are present, and listening too closely. The doctor glanced at me, cleared his throat, and set his bag on the end of the bed.

“Now, then,” he said, “let us take a look at this little scratch of yours.”

On the way back to the boat, the doctor gave me a list of instructions: sleep, food, signs of trouble. “He is quite strong, however, and I should not be surprised if he is up and about in a matter of days. I shall send over a pair of crutches. You will see that he does not overexert himself, please.”

“I don’t understand. I had no expectation of staying longer than a day.”

The doctor stopped in his tracks and turned to me. “What’s this?”

“I gave you a message, to give to my brother. Wasn’t there a reply? Isn’t he coming for me?”

He pushed his spectacles up his nose and blinked slowly. The sun was beginning to touch the cliffs to the west, and the orange light surrounded his hair. The deck around us was neat and shining, bleached to the color of bone, smelling of tar and sunshine. “Coming for you? Of course not. You are to care for the patient. Who else is to do it?”

“But I’ll be missed,” I said 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.”

“But I don’t understand. What’s going on? What sort of trouble is this?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said virtuously.

“Yes, 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?”

“Because 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.”