Lady Miracle Read Free

sat there: a small, slight thing, shivering under ragged folds, its pale hair in a tangle. It stared up at him, then scuttled away, using scrawny arms to slide backward. It did not run. The creature stared at him. Its eyes were light, its face elfin. Was this indeed a child of the fair folk—the fairies? But the wobbling lower lip was so human—this was a child, lost and frightened, a little girl clutching a ragged plaid around her, her hair all tangled golden curls.
    She sobbed out, and the small sound stirred Diarmid to the soul. He hunkered down. “Are you lost, little one?” he asked gently. She shook her head mutely, scuttled backward. “Not lost? How is it you are out here alone? Where is your mother or your father?”
    Silent, she only shivered in the cold wind.
    “Here,” he said, drawing the plaid closer around her. He held out a hand. “Come, I will take you home to your kin. Tell me where to find them.” He stood, beckoned.
    She held up her thin arms, a trusting gesture. She wanted him to lift her up.
    ” Ach, you’re that tired, hey.” He bent down and picked her up. She might have been a sack of feathers. He began to descend the slope. The child rode in his arms like a moonbeam, weightless, fragile, silent. She tilted he head against his shoulder.
    “What is your name?” he asked. She watched him with somber eyes. “I am Diarmid.”
    “I heard a wildcat,” she whispered.
    “It cannot harm you now,” he replied. “I am here.”
    “I waited for you. I was cold,” she added plaintively. “And then you came.”
    He frowned. No one expected him here. He had ridden out to visit the girl-child fostered in Sim MacLachlan’s household. He remembered a pretty, sturdy toddler with blond curls and the impish, crooked smile of the Dunsheen Campbells. This little one was fair and young, but far more delicate a child than that one would be at her current age.
    Sim MacLachlan, who had the safekeeping of his niece, Brigit Campbell, kept Fionn’s orphaned daughter well. Diarmid had left her in the care of Sim’s wife as an infant, and paid a handsome fee each year to keep her fostered and happy there.
    The girl looked up at him. “Are you the king?”
    “King of Scots? I am not.” He almost smiled.
    “King of the Daoine Sìth ,” she said. “They are my kin. I am a changeling child.” She said it casually, as if she told him the color of her hair, or the number of her toes.
    He stopped. On this moonlit night, he could almost believe that of the waif. But the pressure of her little arms around his neck, the unwashed odor of her hair, her fragile weight were real—and alarming. Something was very wrong here. “You are what?”
    “Old Morag says my kin are the fair folk. She is Simmie’s old grandmother,” she added.
    “Sim MacLachlan?” he asked. A sense of dread filled him. Reaching his horse, he bent to set the child on the ground for a moment. Her arms tightened around his neck.
    “Do not let go,” she said. “I cannot walk.”
    Suddenly he was aware of the limp drape of her legs over his arm. “Are you hurt?”
    “I have a curse on me. Morag says I am a changeling. She is a wise woman.”
    “I hardly think so,” he growled.
    “She said if I stayed out here, all would be well.”
    He narrowed his eyes. “Old Morag left you out here alone?”
    She nodded. “I am to wait for the daoine sìth to come for me. And here you are.” She tilted her head. “You are tall and strong, like a king.”
    He huffed. “I am no sìtheach come for you.”
    ” Ach, ” she said, nodding wisely, “you are.” Her quick smile was elfin.
    That slanted little grin struck him to the heart. Carefully, he set her at the front of his saddle and swung up behind her.
    Someone had abandoned this child, believing her to be a changeling—a weakling fairy child switched for a healthy human one—in this case perhaps because she was fragile and had some trouble in her legs. The idea of such cruelty and