Lady Miracle (13 page)

“In the meantime, what treatment do you propose?”

“Hot packs and herbal soaks, medicines for pain and stiffness, and techniques to strengthen the muscles.”

“I began those treatments months ago,” he said.

“Of course. You would know how to treat muscle weakness.”

“I know little besides the basic herbs and the need for heat. A local herb-wife prepares herbal doses for her, and Lilias gives her those and applies moist hot cloths often. The curling of her foot concerns me,” he added.

“Her foot is beginning to drop, and soon those muscles will shrivel and her foot will stay limp. We can place a board in her bed to support her foot when she lays down. But we must stretch her muscles, and she must be on her feet more often.”

“On her feet?” He raised his brows. “She sits up often. We carry her downstairs each day.”

“She can stand,” Michael said.

“She falls,” he countered.

“She will learn to catch herself,” she said decisively.

He frowned. “But her legs are fragile.”

“Her muscles are beginning to atrophy,” she said bluntly. “We must encourage strength rather than weakness. She is a healthy child, not a piece of Venetian glass. She will fall, but she will pick herself up.”

Diarmid lowered his brows. “I brought you here to help her, not to impose harsh demands on her. I want her healed,” he said, teeth clenched, “wholly and fully. I do not want her to drag herself about, lamed and marked, like a freak in a city gutter.”

Michael faced him, her shoulders squared. “You have asked the impossible of me. Allow me to attempt it.”

He stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“I want to watch Brigit, and work with her, before I know—”

“Know what?” he demanded.

“If she will walk,” she finished.

“She will,” he snapped. “You will see to it.”

“Then allow me my methods!” She glared at him.

He leaned down toward her. “I have told you what I want!”

“And I have told you what I can do!”

He opened his mouth to reply hotly, then paused to master his temper. “I want her healed, Michael. Quickly. Surely you understand.”

Her gaze softened. “I do. You are a fool, Dunsheen, but a wonderful kind of fool.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“A fool made simple by his love for a small child.” She gave him a sweet smile, so kind that it made his heart ache. He looked into her sky-colored gaze and wanted to pour some of his agony into that well, to find comfort, understanding, relief there.

But sharing his grief would mean forgiving himself. He shuttered the urge quickly, looking away. “I am her guardian, and I owe her an obligation,” he said curtly. “Tell me—what other methods do you plan to use to treat her?”

“Herbal poultices and infusions,” she said. “I need to know what she already takes.”

“I will go over the ingredients with you later.”

She nodded and turned as if to go, then spun back. “Can you tell me the day of her birth? Was it March, or late February?”

“Mid-March, the feast of Saint Patrick,” he said, surprised.

“I thought so,” she said. “She is an enchanting child, delicate and kind, with a dreamy, imaginative mind, very much like those born under the constellation of Pisces.”

He rubbed his chin in dismay. “I should have known—a book-learned physician would be an astrologer too,” he muttered.

“Of course,” she said easily. “Those born under the sign of the Fish often have trouble with the feet,” she went on. “But her legs are an area of weakness too, so there must be negative aspects among some of her planets, and perhaps a poor placement of Saturn or Mercury. Do you know the hour of her birth?”

“The hour?” he repeated. He knew it too well. “Why?”

“When Mungo brings my books, I will use my charts to cast her natal horoscope. Then I will better understand the nature of her condition and how best to treat it.”

“Stars are for steering ships at night, and for shedding light on the earth,” he growled. “We had a physician here who made a natal chart and insisted it was accurate. He said her poor Saturn placement made it necessary to amputate her legs.”

Michael paused. “I am sure that is not the case,” she said. “When my belongings arrive, I can show you how helpful a horoscope chart can be for medical matters.”

“Books will not show you what Brigit needs,” he said.

“They will be of great help—”

He leaned close. “Look at her, touch her—heal her, Michael,” he said bluntly. “You need nothing but your hands.”

“If that were true, I would be beatified before the week was out,” she snapped. She clapped a hand over her mouth as if regretting her remark.

He scowled down at her, frustrated once again by her tendency to do what she wanted—rather than what he asked of her. “You would be an admirable saint,” he drawled.

She lifted her chin. “I know what I am doing. If I can discover the planetary influences at the time of her birth and of her illness, I will know more about her health and about what treatment she needs,” she said. “Surely you have used astrology in your surgery experience.”

“I did not learn medicine from dead mathematicians.”

“Will you bleed a patient during a full moon? Or perform surgery then?”

“Not by choice,” he said. “Bleeding can become profuse during the days of a full moon.”

“Exactly. Then you did not cut, advised by astrology.”

“I was advised by plain sense.”

“Charts can predict the waning and waxing of the moon for months in advance. Years,” she added.

“So useful for making schedules in a city barber-surgeon’s shop,” he said wryly. “Income surely increases with the waning of the moon, when bleedings are safe and profitable.”

The glance she shot at him fairly sizzled. “I have never used indiscriminate bleeding techniques,” she said stiffly, “nor did my husband. The tradition of Arabic medicine does not advise that, but does use astrology extensively. All the celestial bodies pull upon the fluids and humors in our bodies and determine the inner balances of body and mind. When we understand that, we know more about our health and ourselves.”

He watched her doubtfully. “Is this what they teach in Italy? What of bandaging methods, or medicinal treatments, or techniques of surgery and childbirth?”

“I learned those too. You, Diarmid Campbell,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “I would say that you were born in the spring. Likely in mid-April.”

He blinked once, twice. “The eighteenth day of April. You guessed by luck,” he said.

She smiled. “Your character told me. You are so much the ram—headstrong, determined, impatient, impulsive. You want others to do as you say, and do it now. Those born under the sign of Aries are highly intelligent and—” she stopped.

He folded his arms. “Go on, I am fascinated.”

“The ram loves to hear about himself,” she said saucily.

“Highly intelligent and what?” he prodded, suppressing a wide grin.

“And passionate in all endeavors,” she said frankly, but Diarmid saw her cheeks pinken.

He quirked a brow. “Would you like to find out?”

She looked away quickly. “I am sure enough,” she said. “I would guess that your ascending star is in Scorpio—you have some secrets—and your moon is probably in the sign of the Crab”—she studied him speculatively—“but I would have to know the time of your birth before I could know the rest.”

“Moon and stars or none, you will never learn the whole of me,” he said in a low voice. “Not from books.” He tipped his head and looked at her critically. “I would say that you were born on the twenty-ninth day of September.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “How did you know that?” She smiled. “You do know something of the stars.”

He could not resist. Leaning forward, he tapped her chin, covered by her widow’s wimple, lightly. “I know something of Saint Michael’s Day,” he drawled, “Michaelmas.” He enunciated her name slowly, in careful English.

She looked chagrinned, then laughed. He chuckled with her, feeling a burst of happiness that startled him. “Whatever I learn about you will not come from a chart,” he said somberly. “It will come through being with you. Watching you. Listening to you.” His voice became husky, and he leaned in close. “Touching you.” He should not have said that so boldly, he knew, but just then he felt as if he could not hold back the words, or the thoughts, or the feelings she stirred in him.

She lowered her lashes as if in sudden ecstasy, and he felt its twin in himself, a plummeting rush of desire. He wanted to feel her lips pillow beneath his again, wanted to touch the silk of her hair and skin, wanted more, so much more.

And could not have it. Heart thumping heavily, he fisted his hands against the powerful desire to take her into his arms. Uncertain how he had gotten caught in this current, he fought it like a drowning man.

She looked up then, and drowning or not, he drank in the exquisite color of her eyes. “There is something else that tells me you were born under the ram,” she said softly.

“And what is that?” he whispered.

She reached up and touched his left eyebrow with the tip of her finger. “Head wounds,” she said. “Aries is prone to them.”

He could not answer for a moment. A feeling shot through him at her simple touch, a sensation so strong that he sucked in his breath. Warmth like liquid fire rushed through him, head to toe, its source the point at which her finger met his skin.

She smiled, fleeting and soft. “Here is another, and another.” Her fingers slid along his cheek to his stubbled jaw, touching the line of a scar on his chin, tracing the thin crease of another old wound that nicked his upper lip. His heart pounded heavily, and his body surged, filling, desiring, changing the innocence of her touch to something more. His breath deepened, became ragged.

“These scars tell me that the influence of Mars is strong in your life,” she murmured. “You are indeed a warrior.”

Mars be damned. For an instant, he could barely breathe. Fascinated, drawn closer, he leaned in toward her. He had never felt such utter pleasure in a simple touch. He wanted to give her equal pleasure; raising his hand, he touched her cheek tentatively.

She drew in a slow breath and lowered her lids as if she felt the same strange pull that he did, and as if she resisted it too. She dropped her hand quickly and turned to walk away.

Diarmid reached out to pull her back to him, but cold sense spilled in from somewhere. He hesitated, summoned control, and remained still. He should not pursue this with her.

Michael turned back, her face anxious. “Look there,” she said, pointing past the battlement toward the loch.

He lifted his gaze. A galley, long and low, with a gracefully curved prow and stern, glided toward the castle. A square sail billowed out, its embroidered red design of a lightning bolt clearly marked in the sunlight.

“That is one of my own birlinns,” he said. “I own three oared galleys—two for trade use, and one in the service of the king. That is my largest trading galley.” He took her elbow. “Come down to the shore and greet my brother Arthur.”

“Lightning?” Michaelmas asked. She looked at the galley’s wind-filled sail. As she spoke, the men on deck lowered twenty pairs of oars, jutting upward, into place to row closer and pull the galley into place beside the quay. “What does the design signify?”

“The lightning is for Loch
Sìan
,” Diarmid answered. “Loch Sheen has long been called the loch of storms, and so lightning became the device of the Campbells of Dunsheen.”

Michaelmas watched as the galley streamed toward them gracefully, then looked at the silver-blue calm of the loch, at the surrounding pines swaying green and slow, at the soft white clouds drifting overhead. They stood on a natural ridge of rock that thrust into the loch and served as a quay. She could not imagine strife at Dunsheen from weather or war or any other source.

“Storms? It is so peaceful here,” she said.

“If you stay long enough, you will learn why it is called Loch
Sìan
,” Diarmid said, watching the vessel approach. “In fact, we may have a storm very soon,” he murmured.

“On such a clear day, I doubt—”

“I do not mean the weather,” he answered abruptly. He stepped forward, waiting while the long galley drew closer. She thought he frowned as he looked at the two men standing together in the bow of the galley.

She watched his strong profile, his hair whipped back by the wind off the loch, his jaw outthrust as if he dared a storm to overtake him. Suddenly Michaelmas wanted to stay long enough to learn more about this place—and long enough to find out more about the powerful, enigmatic laird who held this castle on the loch of storms.

She seen many ships, though few as elegantly shaped as Diarmid’s birlinn. Large but not heavy in its design, its graceful, powerful lines curved and swept upward like ocean waves in a design similar to the old Viking longships that she had seen in paintings and stone carvings. She knew that the Islesmen favored the old northern design over the heavier, larger European ships used elsewhere, but she had never seen one this close at hand.

As the boat glided in beside the rocky ledge, she studied in fascination the carved, painted detailing along the rim of the hull and the upthrust prow and stern ends, capped with swirled dragons’ heads. The oarsmen shipped the oars upright in the boat, and one man tossed out a long rope. Diarmid caught it and looped it around a jagged boulder. Michaelmas heard the splash of an anchor.

Diarmid stepped closer, but the deep, still water made her uneasy, and she stayed back. Two men stepped out of the boat and down a board carved with footholds, leaping onto the quay. One was clearly a Highlander by his plaid, green and black like Diarmid’s; the other wore a dark surcoat and cloak. He hung back while the Highlander greeted Diarmid with a quick embrace.

“Arthur, welcome!” Diarmid clapped him on the shoulder. They talked, laughing quietly.

Michaelmas immediately noticed the resemblance between them. Arthur’s hair was auburn and his eyes were dark, and he was as tall and broad-shouldered as Diarmid and Gilchrist. His features were amicable, even plain, without Gilchrist’s perfection or the noble strength in Diarmid’s face. But the tilted smile of the Dunsheen Campbells emerged in full dazzle whenever Arthur smiled.