Free Lady Miracle by Susan King Page A

think.”
    “You deal like a warrior—but I am not one of your soldiers to command.”
    He smiled. “They say that physicians are warriors against pestilence and injury and death.”
    “That may be, but we are accustomed to respect.”
    “Come to Dunsheen and look to my niece, Lady Michael.” He smiled, lopsided and charming. “If you will.”
    Michaelmas could not help but laugh. Then she realized what he had said. “Your niece?”
    “Brigit is my brother Fionn’s daughter. I am her guardian now.”
    She remembered his brother from the battlefield near Kilglassie. “He is dead, then?”
    Diarmid nodded curtly.
    “I am sorry,” she murmured in sympathy. “I thought you spoke of your own child.”
    “I no longer have a wife. And we had no children.”
    “I understand,” she said. “I was widowed last year.”
    “I am not a widower,” he said. She glanced at him, puzzled. But the rigid set of his head and back discouraged her from asking more. He rode beside her through the cool morning light, strong, silent, and increasingly mysterious.
    As she glanced at him, she saw a muscle pump along his jaw and a faint blush touch his cheekbones. She had met his prideful, arrogant side; now she glimpsed again that vulnerable man she had seen before, the one who carried a bitter sadness. He kept his sorrows and secrets to himself and drove forward on some hidden, relentless quest to find a cure for an ailing child. Wanting to know more, she could not ask; wanting to help, for that was irrevocably part of her nature, she had only one recourse. “I will examine Fionn’s daughter for you, since you ask it of me.” She hoped her willingness would bring back the lighter mood of a few moments earlier.
    But he only nodded brusquely. “I need more of you.” Simple words, firmly spoken.
    She shook her head. “Only that, Dunsheen.”
    Diarmid stepped his horse closer to hers and reached out to pull on her reins, slowing both horses. He leaned toward her until she angled her head to look at him. “Promise me what I ask, and you will have whatever you desire in return,” he said fervently.
    She stared into the silvery depths of his eyes. A tiny shiver slipped down her back, thrill as much as dread. “Whatever you desire, Lady Michael,” he repeated softly.
    She looked away. “I will not bargain with you.”
    “I will pay you well.”
    “I do not need coin.” She pulled at the reins, but he controlled her horse for the moment.
    “What, then?” he asked. “Land? Cattle? What is it a woman wants?” He frowned. “Marriage? Your brother wants you wed again. Would a husband meet your price?”
    She gasped indignantly, although her heart surged. She wondered if he meant himself, but his earlier remark about a wife was cryptic and confusing. She dismissed the thought—she would never take a husband as stubborn and demanding as this man.
    He took her wrist in his hand, his fingers hard and warm. “I do not beg favors,” he said. “But by God, girl, I am perilously close to it with you. And I will not think kindly of either of us if I come to that.” He drew a long breath. “I know you can heal Brigit. I want you to do it.”
    She shook her head. “Take the child on a pilgrimage to a holy place if you are determined to petition God for a miracle. I am no saint.”
    He turned her hand in his and stroked his thumb over her palm. Shivers ran through her, utterly pleasurable, deeply stirring. “Saint or none, you have angel hands,” he said. “The loan of those is all I seek from you. You may ask what you want in return.”
    “I do not market miracles.” She jerked her hand away.
    He let her go without comment, and urged his horse to walk beside hers. He did not glance at her, although she looked at him repeatedly. Finally she could bear the silence no longer.
    “I would like to help your niece,” she said. “But I cannot do what you want.”
    “You can,” he said evenly, looking ahead.
    She wanted, in that