Page 9 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter nine

Mira

I was still shaking from the nightmare I’d had on the plane just a few hours before landing in Edinburgh.

I remembered jolting awake to the flight attendant calling my name, her hand on my shoulder, trying to shake me out of it.

Embarrassed, I blamed the episode on a trifecta of Big Pharma, red wine, and Emily Bronte, but deep down, I knew better.

This wasn’t just a bad dream. It was connected to the vision I’d had when I touched the portrait. I could feel it in my bones.

My first stop after dropping off my bags at the hotel was Jonathan Blackwell’s office. It was just six blocks away, and I walked over, trying to shake off the last of the jet lag.

The office looked exactly how I imagined it might from our email exchanges—organized chaos. Behind a desk stacked with dog-eared auction catalogs, printed emails, and an assortment of stained teacups sat a cheerful, balding man with a pot belly, unruly white eyebrows, and a neatly trimmed beard .

As I took a seat, I pulled the red leather case from my tote and handed it to him. Without a word, he slipped on a pair of white cotton gloves—an unexpectedly formal gesture considering the cluttered, borderline hoarder vibe of his office—and carefully opened the latch on the box.

He looked at me and then back down at the portrait, and then to me again, and said in a booming voice, “Jings, lass—no doubt about ye being a Garvie now, is there? She could be your twin, even down to the dimple in yer chin. If ye had longer hair, I’d swear it was you.

” He turned the portrait over, raising the magnifying glass from the desk to get a closer look at the surface.

“Rag paper,” he said with a quick nod, examining the slip beneath the portrait with the name and date. “Made from linen fabric scraps, common in the 1600s and 1700s, before they started using wood pulp.”

He turned his attention to the leather case next, falling mostly silent as he inspected it. Every so often, he murmured to himself, nodding slightly, humming a few bars of a tune I didn’t recognize. The quiet stretched out, broken only by the soft rustle of gloves against the worn box.

Finally, he closed the portrait back inside, latched the case, and looked up at me.

“Well, I was right,” he said, settling back in his chair. “I believe it’s the same artist I mentioned before—the one I’ve attributed to three other portraits, all painted sometime between 1755 and 1800. Each example is watercolor on ivory, though that in itself isn’t unusual for the period.”

He tapped the edge of the box thoughtfully.

“What is interesting,” he continued, “is that all the known works by this artist are of women—dark-haired, dark-eyed women. That’s not typical.

Most painters at the time took commissions of men, women, children—when there was coin on the table.

It was a ‘hired gun’ situation, if you will.

But this one…this artist only painted women. And there’s a pattern.”

He leaned forward, lowering his voice slightly.

“All the subjects look slightly flushed, their hair a bit unkempt—there’s something subtly sensual about them.

Not overtly erotic, but intimate. Most portraiture from that era was rigid, posed, formal.

But these…they feel different. When I first saw one, I assumed it was painted for a husband—something to remember his wife by while he was away.

A private moment captured for the bedchamber, maybe. ”

He paused, eyes narrowing slightly in thought.

“But all the examples I’ve seen have that same quality. And because the women also look so much alike, I started to wonder…what if the painter wasn’t just the artist? What if he was the lover?”

Then Jonathan raised both hands, palms out, signaling that he was about to make an important point and I needed to pay attention.

“Even more curious,” he said, leaning in slightly, “I’ve seen an example that I swear was painted by this same artist—but it was dated almost one hundred and fifty years earlier.

That one turned up in France. And then, two more from the mid-1800s showed up in England.

We’re talking about a time span of over two hundred years.

So it couldn’t possibly be the same painter. ”

“Could it have been a student—or an admirer of the original artist—someone trying to copy the same style?” I asked.

“Perhaps…” He shrugged casually. “But in those cases, the original artist is usually well-known—famous, even. Not lost to history like this one. And honestly, it’s rarely difficult to spot when someone’s imitating another painter.

There are always tells—inconsistencies, subtle di fferences in technique, the way they pose their subjects, or changes in materials based on what was popular or available at the time. ”

He brushed a strand of hair off his forehead, cotton gloves still on.

“But not here. The ones I’ve seen? They’re all watercolor on ivory. Just like yours.”

He paused, then added, “And the reason I didn’t include any of this in my email to you?

Reputation. The moment I put something like that in writing—speculating that one artist may have created work spanning nearly three lifetimes—they’d call me a daft eejit, and I wouldn’t work another day.

So if you please, let’s keep my wild ideas between us, aye? ”