Page 58 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter fifty-five

Mira

I walked through the door and was immediately wrapped in the warmth of Baird’s home.

Something smelled incredible—roasted garlic, maybe, or rosemary—and Bunny trotted up to greet me, her nails clicking softly on the floor as she pressed her nose into my leg.

I dropped a hand to scratch behind her ears, already feeling the tightness in my chest start to ease.

Down the hall, I could hear Baird in the kitchen, humming low under his breath between the sound of pans shifting and cupboard doors swinging open and closed.

I followed the sound, dropping my bag by the stairs, and made my way to the counter, where I pulled up a stool and let myself breathe in the scent and the comfort of him.

“Well…where is it?” he asked, not looking up right away but grinning as he stirred something in a saucepan.

“Oh—the necklace,” I said, surprised he’d been waiting so eagerly.

It hadn’t occurred to me that he might care quite so much.

I reached into my tote bag and pulled out the leather box.

Something about it reminded me of the one that held Agnes’s portrait.

Maybe it was just the gravity of it—what it contained.

I flipped the latch and popped the lid open, and there it was: the pendant, glowing with the rich, impossible green of the emeralds against the buttery gleam of the gold.

It had turned out better than I’d imagined—somehow brighter, deeper, as if the emotion poured into it had become something tangible. I turned toward him and held it out.

Baird took it in silence, his fingers brushing the edge of the pendant like he was afraid to disturb it.

He didn’t speak, didn’t smile, just stared at it—his face unreadable but intent.

I saw something shift in his expression, something deep and reverent, like the look he’d given Agnes’s portrait that night in my hotel room.

He nodded silently to himself, as if confirming something.

And then he looked up at me—expectant, yes, but with something more.

“What do ye plan to do with it?”

“Originally I’d planned to sell it,” I said. “But I can’t now. I knew before I even finished it. It’s too personal—maybe the most personal thing I’ve ever made.” It had become a gold and gemstone archive of everything I’d been through.

“All that happened since I came to Scotland is tied up in this piece somehow—it’s all in here, like it got pressed into the gold along with the stones.” I gave a small, almost sheepish laugh. “Maybe I’ll make others like it, now that I’ve learned the technique. But that one? No. It stays with me.”

“Good—I was hoping ye’d say that.” Baird smiled. “I want to see this on ye. Will ye wear it for me later?” he asked, eyes hopeful.

“Yes, I haven’t even tried it on yet,” I said. “What are you making? It smells delicious.”

“Ah, just a roast chicken and some vegetables,” he said casually, as if he hadn’t put thought into every detail. “Maybe leftover chicken sandwich for ye on the boat tomorrow? Whatever is left, Bunny can have,” he added, his voice trailing just slightly at the end .

Then he said it—quietly, almost too casually. “Ye know—after ye leave.”

The words hung there. He didn’t look up from the cutting board, his knife slicing through a carrot with practiced ease, but I felt the shift in the air.

The way he tucked that final phrase in like it was nothing, when it was everything.

‘After ye leave. ’ As if he hadn’t just held the most personal thing I’d ever made in his hands with a look that nearly undid me.

He poured me a glass of wine without asking, and I took it gratefully, the warmth as it went down softening something tight in my chest. I sipped in silence while he worked, watching the ease of his movements—how he slid the cut carrots and potatoes into the roasting pan with the chicken, the way his broad shoulders moved beneath the soft cotton of his shirt.

It felt so domestic, so ordinary. And yet nothing about it felt small.

“How did you learn to cook? It seems an odd skill for a man born when you were,” I asked, sipping my wine.

It was a question that came out of nowhere, and yet, one of the countless things I felt I should have already asked. A thread among a million, and I was grasping at it, aware—painfully aware—that my time with him was running out.

“I suppose that’s true. My granny used to let me help her prepare meals when I spent my summers with her.

Then when I lived on my own, before Agnes and I married, I cooked some.

Just enjoyed it— forgot how I enjoyed it ,” he said, and I wondered if his mind was in the past as he shared this detail.

“Probably thirty minutes or so still until it’s ready. ”

“I think I’ll grab a quick shower, put something clean on,” I replied, holding up my hands to show him the stubborn black smudges still clinging to the creases of my fingers.

“The polishing compound gets into everything—it’s like ink.

I scrubbed at the Guild before I came back, but it’s going to take a bit more work to get it all off. ”

He gave a small, almost amused nod, his gaze briefly drifting to my hands before returning to the task at hand.

After my shower, I padded back downstairs with damp hair clinging to my neck, dressed in clean jeans and a soft T-shirt that smelled faintly of lavender soap.

The kitchen was warm with the scent of roasted garlic and rosemary, a few candles on the table, their soft glow flickering against the glass, casting long shadows that danced across the walls.

Two glasses of wine were already poured.

He sat at the table, cradling his glass, eyes distant as he stared out over the darkened terrace.

I didn’t have to ask what he was thinking about—I knew.

He was remembering the night before. So was I.

When he heard me step in, he looked up, and something softened in his expression.

“Sit. I’ll ready yer plate…” he said gently, rising from his seat.

I slipped into the chair across from where he’d been, the candlelight catching the droplets still clinging to the ends of my hair. I looked out toward the terrace too, where the night pressed close, thick and quiet. The memory of it all was still chasing me, like a breath on the back of my neck.

I tried to make sense of what had happened—what it meant, what we were supposed to carry forward.

Bastien had spoken in riddles and truths too heavy to hold.

Was it a warning? A blessing? A passing of something ancient from one soul to another?

I couldn’t tell. I only knew that something had shifted in both of us.

And now we had to decide what to do with it.

I ate in silence, and Baird’s gaze moved from me to the terrace and back to me so many times, I lost count.

It was almost as if he were looking for something in me that he couldn’ t find now, and it made me anxious.

I thought about that first night we’d sat in this spot and drank, a different kind of tension between us then.

The silence tonight was deafening and made me claustrophobic.

“I feel like we’re strangers all of a sudden,” I said, the words slipping out before I could temper them, raw and unpolished. I wasn’t trying to wound—I was just trying to name the ache that had been threading through me all day.

Baird set down his glass and looked at me with that steady, unflinching gaze.

“Nae, lass. Not strangers,” he said softly.

“Yer guard is up now, is all. That first night…” A crooked smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and the glint in his eyes made the meaning unmistakable—he’d been comparing the nights too.

“Ye were wide open to me,” he said, voice low.

Heat flickered through me despite the heaviness of the moment, and he saw it—of course he did.

“My guard’s up too,” he continued, more serious now. “Not the same way as yours, but…it’s there. We’re both carryin’ something we weren’t back then. And it’s weighin’ on us.”

The chicken really was perfect—tender, rich, fragrant—but I could only pick at it, distracted not just by the tension between us, but by the memories he’d so deftly stirred.

That first night had been reckless and breathless and real.

I wanted that back—wanted to crawl out from behind this grief and uncertainty, just for a little while.

To feel him again, to remind myself of what we were before the truth had come out.

Maybe I needed to let go. To stop guarding myself like I was already gone.

Because I wasn’t—not yet. The thought echoed through me like a vow, quiet but firm.

I rose from my chair and walked slowly toward him, so much like that first night—how I had gone to him without hesitation, without second thoughts—but tonight, every step held weight.

I was slower. Softer. A little afraid. But I moved anyway.

When I reached him, he looked up at me, and I saw it—the flicker of relief in his eyes, like he’d been waiting, hoping, not sure if I’d come. And maybe neither of us had been sure what we needed until now.

It had only been two nights since we’d last been together, but the distance between then and now felt enormous.

So much had happened—too much. Pain I had caused him, truths that had wounded us both.

And the deep, dark rupture someone else had carved into us.

We were still bleeding from it in places unseen.

I moved closer, swinging my leg over his and settling into his lap, straddling him in the chair.

My hands braced lightly on his shoulders, and I felt the shift in his breath, the way his body tensed, then softened beneath me.

For a moment, we just stayed like that, eyes locked, the air between us thick with everything unspoken.

This wasn’t about desire. Not just. It was about needing to remember who we were when all the rest had fallen away.