Lady Miracle

by Susan King

  When she opened her eyes, she was unsure how long she had lain in Brigit’s bed. She vaguely remembered a dream about a sculpted angel with a broken wing, but could recall little of it. She glanced across the room toward the table, where the candle still glowed.

  Diarmid sat there, his back to her. The candlelight formed a golden nimbus around his dark head. He was absorbed in what he read, his elbow on the table, his chin propped on his hand. Every few moments he silently turned a page. Lifting her head, she saw that he looked at the book of surgery.

  Not wanting to disturb him, she lay back on the pillow and watched him. The soft rustle of parchment as he flipped the pages was a peaceful sound. She felt empty, needy, still filled with sadness, and his silent presence was comforting.

  He seemed caught in his reading, careful to use her books when he thought her asleep. In a short while he closed the book and stood. She closed her eyes, pretending to sleep, not wanting him to know that in his privacy she had watched him.

  Moments later she sensed him standing near the bed, and felt the warm brush of his hand and linen sleeve as he reached over her shoulder to touch Brigit’s head. Then his hand brushed over her own bare head. The sensual graze of his fingertips sent a cascade of shivers through her, followed by the plummeting force of a fierce, deep yearning. She wanted him to touch her, hold her, but she lay still. After a moment he turned away.

  She heard Padraig woof softly. ”Ach, lad,” Diarmid murmured. “You will wake them. Sleep, now, fellow.” The dog whined, and Michael opened her eyes to see Diarmid bend to pat his head.

  Diarmid saw her then. “Did he wake you? I am sorry.”

  “I—I should be in my own bed,” she said, and sat up. “Brigit was restless, so I lay down with her.”

  “Lay down if you are tired. Brigit will not mind.” His slanted grin was gentle and intimate.

  “I am glad you are here,” she said softly, and blushed. “I wanted to talk to you about Brigit.” She rose from the bed and went to the table. Opening Ibrahim’s book, she showed him what she had found.

  He read the Latin text quickly, and straightened to glance at her, his brows drawn together. “Lame fever. I have not heard of it before. But it is similar to her symptoms.”

  “You spoke with the old woman who fostered her—”

  “Abandoned her,” he corrected tersely. “Old Morag said that her son and his wife and two others of their kin died of a fever after her son returned ill from a long journey to Berwick. Brigit became ill after they did.”

  “Ships,” he said suddenly. He turned back to the book. “Sim MacLachlan was involved, as many Islesmen are, with shipping and imports. He made frequent trips to sea ports—Ayr, Glasgow, and the eastern ports of Berwick and Aberdeen. He could have had contact with merchants who had been in eastern and southern countries, or, as Ibrahim says here, with men who had recently been to the Holy Land.”

  She sighed. “Regardless of how she became ill, Ibrahim indicates no cure for this illness.”

  “Your husband was a wise man in many ways,” Diarmid said. “But he was wrong in that.”

  “Diarmid, there is no cure—”

  “There is. You hold it in your hands.”

  She sighed looked away, knowing what he did not: that she had already tried and failed. “Ibrahim would want me to chart Brigit’s natal horoscope,” she said. “That will give us some answers—it will,” she insisted, when Diarmid made a skeptical sound. “But I need to know the exact hour of her birth. March the seventeenth, five years past? Would you know the time of night or day? Did her mother or the midwife ever mention it?”

  A shadow passed over his face. “Just before dawn,” he said quietly. “No more than a quarter hour passed before the sun rose that day.”

  “Were you there?”

  “I delivered her,” he said flatly, turning away.

  She stared at him in surprise. In Italy, she had known only one or two male physicians who would even consent to attend a birth, and then only when the mother was in serious danger. He stared at the bed where his tiny niece lay curled. “Brigit was born lusty and strong,” he said softly. “But she lost much that day. She has little awareness of it, I think. One day I will have to be the one to tell her.”

  Michael waited, but he said no more, only raked his fingers through his hair. The anxious gesture tugged at her heart. “Tell her what?”

  “That she has no close blood kin because of me,” he ground out. “Will she think me a king, a man of magic after that, do you suppose?” he asked bitterly.

  “Her mother died then?” He nodded once. “A death in childbirth is tragic, and too common. You should not blame yourself.”

  He laughed harshly.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said, touching his arm. His muscles were tense and hard beneath her fingers. Her heart beat quickened as she waited.

  He did not speak, looking at the Brigit. The candlelight sputtered fitfully over the planes of his face, then burned to a sudden close. Darkness engulfed them.

  “Tell me,” she murmured, her voice insistent in the shadows.

  He sighed. “Not here.” He took her hand in the dark and pulled her through the shadows toward the door, their footsteps whispering on the rushes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Michael shivered in the chilly corridor and followed Diarmid as he went toward the stairs. He moved up a few steps, then turned and sat on a wedge-shaped step. Michael sat beside him. A watery moonlit glow shed down over their heads from the arrowslit window above them. The space was close and private at this late hour, if voices were quiet.

  She waited. Diarmid rested his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands, and looked down. “Brigit had a twin brother,” he began. His voice, just above a whisper, was a velvet drift of sound. “He was stillborn just after her. Their mother died just after that.” A heavy silence followed his blunt, quiet words. “I was the only one there.”

  “Diarmid,” she breathed in sympathy. “You could not have caused any of it.”

  “All of it,” he said flatly. He leaned his shoulders against the wall. His thigh brushed against her leg in the small space. “I blame myself for all of it.” She protested, but he shook his head. “When Maire began her labor, the weather was poor, a heavy gale that kept the midwife away. I was there at Glen Bevis, Fionn’s castle. I had arrived a day earlier to bring him a message, but he had left for Ireland with Edward Bruce.”

  “Edward Bruce’s invasion on Irish soil?” Michael asked. “Gavin mentioned that once. He said it was a disaster.”

  “It was, but the campaign had not yet fallen apart then,” he said. “The night I arrived, Maire began her labor. She was alone but for an old serving woman and the few men who had not gone with Fionn. I had planned to sail to Ireland, but I stayed to help her. The midwife could not come, and I knew the birth process, although I had never attended a woman’s delivery.”

  “I know you did your best.” Michael laid her hand on his forearm, wanting that close contact, sensing that he needed it. “If a birthing goes wrong, it is generally God’s will.”

  He held out his palms. “Brigit was born into my hands. She took her first breath here.”

  Unexpected tears came to Michael’s eyes. She slid her fingers over his left hand, feeling the harsh scars there. “There is a deep bond between you,” she said. “That is why you love her so much, like a father. And why she adores you so.”

  He folded his fingers over hers. “I could do nothing for her brother, but I did all I could for Maire, who was bleeding heavily. But she died so quickly—” He sucked in a breath. Michael squeezed his hand, tears in her eyes as she imagined the panic and grief he must have felt that night.

  He kept a fierce hold of her hand; she felt the slight tremor in his smallest fingers. He tipped his head back against the stone wall. Moonlight rinsed his face with a misty blue light, outlined his strong throat as he swallowed heavily.

  “Ah, Diarmid,” she said finally, her voic
e thick with unshed tears. “You did not cause any of that.”

  “I carry that night with me still,” he said in a hushed voice. “I dream about it.” He looked away, his hair swinging over his cheek, hiding his expression. Michael’s fingers trembled now, with his.

  “The midwife came the next day and made sure to tell me how poorly I had handled the matter. We buried Maire and the child, and the midwife found a wet-nurse for Brigit—her mother had named her as she died. I left for Ireland to find Fionn.”

  “Surely he understood,” she whispered. She cradled his curled, powerful fingers in her hand, wanting to comfort him, but unsure how.

  “I think Fionn knew that I had done my best,” he said. He took a deep breath. “He had terrible grief and rage, but he did not blame me. We marched with the Scots, and came to a field where we met the Irish. Fionn threw himself into battle with true ferociousness, half crazed, as if he meant to let himself be killed. I went after him. Two Irish gallowglasses came at us, swords high. Fionn was cut down.” He paused.

  Michael said nothing, her heart pounding as she waited for him to continue.

  “He might have lived, I think, if an experienced surgeon had worked on him,” he said. “An Irishman’s sword had sliced open my hand, and I was bleeding at the wrist. I nearly died beside my brother, but Fionn had asked me to watch over Brigit. I promised that I would. I could not let myself die, after he did.”

  She watched him through the sparkle of her tears. Listening to his hushed voice, she saw in her mind the two dark-haired brothers, fallen in Irish mud; she heard the gasping request, the hoarse promise. A fat, hot tear slipped down her cheek.

  “I instructed one of the Scots in repairing my hand. The fellow had scant talent for surgery, as it turned out.” He flexed his hand in hers and laughed harshly. “I sometimes wonder if the injury was meant as a punishment. It is my hell on this earth for my incompetence.”

  “Never say that!” She gripped his fingers. “You did no wrong. Fionn bore no grudge.”

  “But I do.”

  She put a shaking hand over her eyes. More tears slid down. She could not stop them now. Diarmid made a soft sound, and wove her fingers gently in his. His free hand slipped over her hair.

  ”Ach, do not cry.” She felt his chin press against her head. “Michael, my girl. Do not cry. Come here.”

  She turned into the blessedness of his arms with a little sob. He held her, rocking silently, his stubbled chin rasping against her brow. The sadness she felt began to fade as he touched her, replaced by a kind of blissful sense of sanctuary, as if his arms sheltered her from harm. Nestled against him, she pressed her wet cheek against his wool-covered shoulder and sighed into the comfort that surrounded her.

  Here, in the arms of a man she hardly knew, she was home, and safe, and where she must be. The thought stunned her. Her years in Ibrahim’s house had been an intellectual refuge. He had offered her teaching and friendship, but indifferent affection. She had never known the whole sense of protection and comfort that she felt in Diarmid’s arms.

  Remnants of the old, awful loneliness that she had so long felt gathered power inside of her. She clung to Diarmid. Meaning to offer him solace, she found herself soothed. She lifted her head and pulled away a little to look up at him.

  His face was close in the moonlight, his eyes like silver, his hair dark as shadows. Still in his arms, she thought the heavy beat of her heart would shake them both.

  “I did not mean to hurt you with this,” he said.

  “You have not hurt me,” she whispered.

  “Michael my girl,” he murmured. “Where were you five years back? I needed you then.” A sad smile tilted one corner of his mouth. He touched her hair, sifting the wayward strands in a gentle, reflective gesture, as if he were lost in his thoughts.

  “I needed you then,” he repeated. “And now it is too late.”

  He touched his lips to her brow softly, regretfully. Her knees turned weak as butter and her eyelids floated down. Yearning for more, she sighed.

  “If I had known,” she said, “I would have come to you.”

  ”Ach Dhia,” he breathed, and covered her mouth with his.

  He had kissed her before, but not like this. Now he took her into him, possessed her, as if he breathed in her soul and kept her within him. She did not want to be released. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she returned the kiss, feeling joy and a sense of relief to be able to hold him, touch him as she had yearned to do.

  He tilted his head as his lips opened over hers again and again, in a heated rhythm that plunged through her like fire, like honey, taking breath, taking thought. She could not get enough, ever, of this.

  He traced his lips along her cheek, along the tender edge of her jaw towards her earlobe. Her legs wavered as if her bones melted inside. He leaned back against the wall and took her with him, settled across his lap, supported in his arms.

  “Michael,” he murmured against her throat. His lips played across her throat, her jaw, her mouth. She did not speak, could not, finding the slanted corner of his mouth, kissing the quirk there, tasting the salty, wine flavor of his inner lip.

  He returned the exploration as if he were starved, taking her lower lip between his, letting his tongue lick open the seal of her lips. He entered her mouth sweetly, a hot, gentle, exquisite feeling.

  She knew that men and women could ignite passion like this between them; she had never experienced much of it herself, but she had read about its stages, its symptoms, its dangers. She knew the theories of the humors that drove the sensual urges in the body. But she had never felt their power gather and flow through her, turning her heartbeat to thunder, her flesh to liquid heat.

  His hands warmed over her, soothing, sliding, his breath deepening. She spanned her hands over his chest and felt his thumping heart beneath her touch. His fingers traced the swell of her breasts, sensitive even beneath layers of silk and black wool. His hands swept down to her waist, up again, until his thumbs found the ready buds of her nipples. She arched into him, craving now, longing, taking his mouth hungrily with hers.

  Then he made a muffled sound and broke away, holding her against his chest. “Michael, forgive me. I did not mean for this to happen.”

  “Diarmid—” she said.

  “Listen to me,” he murmured. “I am not much given to talk about my troubles. The tale is a heavy burden, I know. No one knows the whole of it but you.” He paused, his breath slowing, less urgent. “As for the rest—ach, you must think I had too much wine.” His lips pressed against her brow. “Dear girl, I have not.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and waited for her own breath to slow, waited for the pulsing need in her lower body to calm. “I wanted to hear it,” she said. “Heartfelt wounds must be cleansed, or they will never heal. And as for the rest that passed between us—” she looked up at him. “I wanted that too.”

  He sighed, long and deep. “We should forget this. I am wed, for all it is worth.” He paused, and in that silence, her heart shattered at his feet.

  “I know,” she said. “I am sorry, Diarmid.”

  “Listen to me,” he said urgently. “Anabel and I were given penance by the court. On pain of losing our souls to damnation, we vowed never to dishonor our marriage. It was the only way to win the separation. Michael, I cannot wed you. I can give you nothing. I do not want you to be my mistress.”

  Michael began to say that she would not be a mistress to any man, but she only choked back an incoherent sob. She stood quickly, spinning to run down the steps. Diarmid strode after her, but she ran along the corridor to the door of her chamber. She yanked open the door and closed it behind her, before her heart could urge her to stop, to turn, to run back.

  She leaned against the thick oak, her breath heaving, fighting sobs. Hearing his knock on the door, she held herself still. She felt the press of his weight against the oak, leaning against it just as she did.

  ”Micheil,” he murmured. “Forgive me for le
ading you into this.”

  She held in a sob, waiting in silence. The thickness of the door separated them, linked them. She yearned to tell him he was forgiven, that she loved him, that she would be anything to him that he desired. Tears started in her eyes. She moved her hand to the latch.

  But her fingers shook, and she stopped, swamped by fear, as if she stood at the edge of a precipice. Her heart felt newborn, needy, uncertain.

  Thick oak held her apart from Diarmid, but she heard him there, mere inches away. Her heart thumped like a storm as longing and fear collided. A small, cautious inner voice told her that she was foolish to love him. She listened, and agreed.

  But a deeper voice, softer, kinder, whispered that Diarmid was the source of all there was in her life, all there ever would be. Go to him, the voice urged; reach for him; find a way to be together. But she could not bring herself to move, though she might wither for lack of what she wanted.

  After a few moments she felt his fist thud once, softly, against the door. And she heard him walk away.

  She leaned against the door and wrapped her arms around herself. All this had come too late, as Diarmid had said. She would harden her heart against his appeal, for she knew he would do the same. She would not let herself love him.

  She would not.

  A soft, low-lying veil of mist covered the moors as Diarmid and Angus rode side by side on their return to Dunsheen. Several days of traveling had taken them from one Campbell castle to another, from the castle of the clan chief, Campbell of Lochawe, to the keeps belonging to Diarmid’s cousins Neill Campbell and Donald MacArthur, and to the hall of his own younger brother Colin Campbell of Glen Bevis. He and Mungo had been shown generous Highland hospitality and had taken part in long, complex discussions that had often continued deep into the night.

  The concerns of his fellow Highlanders over the political and economic situations and matters of trade had occupied Diarmid’s thoughts for days. As they rode home, he and Mungo had tried to sort through what they had learned about Ranald MacSween’s loyalties and activities. None of the Campbell kin suspected MacSween of treason, and none knew of subversive political moves on his part. Few, though, had expressed any praise for the man beyond his shrewd merchanting abilities. MacSween was clearly disliked, though no one seemed to hate him or consider him dangerous or evil in nature. He was merely a self-server. Any distrust of him centered there.