Page 42 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter forty

Mira

B aird returned with two tumblers of Scotch.

He set his own glass down first, then crouched in front of me, gently pressing mine into my hands.

I was still trembling—fine, involuntary movements that made the ice in the glass clink faintly against itself.

Without a word, he wrapped his hands around mine, steadying them, enclosing my fingers in his until I had enough control to hold it on my own.

Then he turned to the hearth. He moved with quiet purpose, kneeling to stack kindling from the brass pail, nestling it into the crisscross of logs he’d already arranged.

A single match flared to life, its sulfur scent sharp in the air.

He touched it to the kindling, coaxing the fire gently until it caught.

The first crackles sparked, and the glow began to build—soft amber light blooming outward, casting long shadows and the first hints of heat into the cold room.

“I’m going to move the chair closer to the fire,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.

Now that my mind and body were beginning to settle, I scrambled to my feet, suddenly aware of how long I’d sat there—how much I didn’t want to be an inconvenience .

“No, stay put,” he ordered gently, the authority in his voice laced with care.

He moved behind where I was sitting and bent down, arms around the chair, and lifted—the chair, me, and all—like it weighed nothing. Like I weighed nothing. Like I was some fragile, precious thing he wasn’t going to let slip away.

If it hadn’t been so achingly sweet, it would have been absurd.

It was absurd—being carried across the room in a huge chair like an invalid carried by a giant—but maybe that was the point.

Maybe this was his way of showing me I wasn’t crazy.

That I hadn’t imagined the whole damn thing.

That all of it—his story, Bastien, and Agnes—were real.

I sipped my whisky and stared into the fire, the soft pop and hiss of the logs filling the aching silence between us.

The fiery sting of the Scotch burned down my throat, grounding me—something real, something I could hold on to when everything else inside me felt like it had come apart in ways I didn’t fully understand.

Of all the truths I’ve been forced to swallow tonight, the hardest wasn’t that the man stalking me was a vampire.

It was that Baird—quiet, steady Baird—wasn’t the reclusive island farmer I believed him to be.

He’s over two hundred seventy years old, when you count his mortal life and everything after.

And even after I’d laid my soul bare to him, he still kept that from me.

Or maybe the hardest part was this: that he might be the man Granny Margaret saw for me—the one she said was my missing piece.

But what if the thing growing between us, the thing I felt from the first moment I saw him, was nothing more to him than a way to rewrite the past?

A chance to bring back Agnes, through someone who shared the same face?

I didn’t want to be a ghost’s stand-in—some fucked-up second chance at a love that already died .

I was lost to my thoughts when Baird returned with another blanket, gently draping it over my shoulders, tucking it in like I might break if left exposed. Then he sank to the floor beside me, his back resting against the leg of the chair.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t press. He just waited. And somehow, that made it easier.

I knew he still had more to say—so much more—but he would let me come to it in my own time. What he didn’t know was that I had something to say too. A confession. Not a secret I’d been hiding, not exactly. Just another thing I hadn’t let myself believe.

But our fates were intertwined now—threaded together by blood and memory, by secrets and things that could no longer be undone. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer. Not with him sitting so still beside me, his presence comforting me in my tumult.

“Baird,” I said quietly, my voice still rough and raw. He looked up at me, his eyes catching the firelight, green and glowing and unmistakably inhuman. And yet, somehow, they held more human connection than I’d ever felt from anyone in my life.

“There’s something I need to tell you too.”

He turned and reached up to hold one hand. “Tell me, love.”

“When I met my cousins in Kirriemuir, Evie said her grandmother might be able to help me understand the two men I kept seeing—what they meant, why they kept showing up. I told her I’d had waking visions and nightmares of them, like they were from another time.

” I hesitated, unsure how to put the next part into words.

“Granny Margaret laid her hands on me, and her eyes rolled back into her head. When it was over—when she was satisfied—she could see and speak again. The very first thing she told me was that both men were near me now, not in the past. Then she told me the dark man— Bastien —was treated cruelly as a child and grew up to be cruel too. But she said his intentions toward me were unclear. I didn’t believe her; it didn’t make sense to me. Not then.”

“But it does to ye now, aye?” Baird said, and I could see he thought this was the end of my story.

“Yes. But then she told me about the ‘ ither man, ’” I said softly. “That’s what she called him. ‘ The one with the green eyes .’”

Baird stilled completely, the fire casting gold and shadow across his face. I saw the flicker of recognition before I even said the rest.

“She saw you, Baird. Before we’d met. She said you carry a great sadness in your heart.” I paused, swallowing back the thickness in my throat. “I knew it the first day we met. I felt it. That sorrow, like a living thing around you. But she also said something else.”

He was watching me now, not breathing. Waiting.

“She said you would never hurt me. And that part…I don’t just believe it, Baird—I know it.

I feel it deep inside me, as sure as anything I’ve ever known.

I don’t know if she knew what you are, but it was as if she knew I’d need to know that at some point.

Then she said you wouldn’t know what to do with me,” I added, a small laugh escaping as I remembered the stunned look on his face when I first told him my name.

“That I was some kind of puzzle to you.”

He laughed too then—low and warm, a sound that wrapped around me, making me feel suddenly safe. “Aye—ye are that, lass,” he said, shaking his head with a smile. “A puzzle and then some.”

I shifted slightly in the chair, emboldened by the flicker of lightness that was returning between us. “And finally, she told me, ‘ don’t miss him when ye find him—he’s the piece ye be lookin’ fer.’” I said it in my best Garvie accent, mimicking the old woman’s lilt.

He froze for a beat. His smile faltered, just slightly, eyes shining with something too deep for speech .

“Evidently, she’s also famous in Kirriemuir for being something of a matchmaker,” I said shyly, embarrassed.

“And ye didn’t think ye could tell me this?” Baird chuckled.

“I didn’t believe it myself,” I replied.

“But ye know it to be true now,” he said, his voice low, steady. “And I’ll wager that if ye sit with it—quietly, in that place deep down in yer gut—ye believed it even then. When she first told ye. Maybe not with yer mind, but with that part of ye that knows things before they make sense.”

His eyes held mine, unwavering, not demanding—but inviting me gently to the place he was going. “It was just too much for the Mira Garvie who deals in facts and logic, aye? Too wild. Too impossible. So ye tucked it away. Fought it. Like I’ve seen ye do when somethin’ in ye dares to feel too much.”

He shifted slightly, drawing just a breath closer.

“But this thing inside ye—it’s beggin’ for ye to lean into it, lass.

And ye keep holdin’ it at arm’s length, like it might burn ye if ye let it in.

Yer dancin’ around this power ye’ve been blessed with, and every now and then, I see ye let it in, just for a moment.

When ye do, ye almost glow from the inside—impossibly powerful. It’s a thing of beauty.”

We stayed like that—me curled in the chair, wrapped tightly in blankets, and Baird on the floor at my feet, solid and unmoving.

Day had quietly given way to night, though I barely noticed.

Sunlight and moonlight had twined together in the hours between, blending into something indistinct, like the border between dreams and waking.

It passed beyond the windows, and I registered it only vaguely, like a current beneath deep water.

“Mira,” Baird said softly, a small yawn escaping his lips—a sound I’d never heard from him before. It startled me in its sweetness, its simplicity. A human sound, somehow more intimate than any touch. “It’s late. Let me put ye into bed. Ye’ve class tomorrow.”

The way he said it—it sounded like he meant to leave.

Like he’d tuck me in and disappear into the night.

And despite everything that had unraveled between us, I didn’t want that.

I didn’t want to fall asleep alone, didn’t want to wake from some nightmare and reach for him only to find emptiness.

Even though I had the eerie sense he’d come to me before I could even cry out, I still wanted him near. Beside me.

“You’re staying with me, aren’t you?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

He turned toward me fully then, his green eyes meeting mine. “If ye want me, I’ll be at yer side,” he said. “All ye ever have to do is ask.”