Page 22 of A Trickster’s Temptation

He wasn’t here to argue with the coachman. Neither was he here to stand in the middle of the street like an idiot, wincing at the roar of the sea that slapped against the railings on other side of the road, worrying that a gull would deposit mess all over his coat.

He had come for Mary. Come, more specifically, to apologise to Mary. And God in heaven, he hoped he’d found where she was hiding.

‘Oh!’ He jumped onto the pavement as a smaller carriage rushed along the road, the grey mare leading it trying to take a bite out of his arm as she passed. Adam shrank against the wall of one of the houses for a long moment, fighting the urge to jump back into the carriage and tell the impolite coachman to take him directly home to bed.

Doing things as himself was difficult. He'd certainly never visited the seaside as himself before. The idea was almost unseemly. Perhaps once, as a child--but even then he probably hadn't liked it, the roar and slap of the waves and the harsh screaming of the black-headed gulls, and had no doubt cried so hard that his father had beaten him soundly.

Yes. In fact, that had definitely happened at least once. Adam stepped out into the middle of the pavement, causing an old lady to glare at him as she swept past with her companion hurrying behind her, and took a deep breath.

Visiting places with a new name, a new face, meant that memories like the one that had just assailed him stayed safely in the background. They had happened to someone else, someone more vulnerable--someone who couldn't protect themselves. But now he was here as himself, as Adam Hart, and Adam Hart didn't have any armour at all against the slings and arrows of the world.

He was... weak. Adam took another breath, his lungs suddenly very tight indeed.

No. He couldn't stop now. Yes, he was weak, yes, he was no-one important--but he wasn't here for himself, he was here for Mary. And unless he was very much mistaken, this was the street where he'd find her.

He started walking again, making sure to first turn and tip his hat to the elderly woman who had glared at him. All of the seafront hotels were much the same in style, painted with a white that had no doubt once gleamed but now looked aged and cracked. Adam peered at the name of each hotel, aware that he probably looked insane to passers-by but completely unable to care.

The Grand... The Conway... The Harrow.

The Harrow.

It was smaller than the other hotels, considerably less grand when it came to its railings and pillars outside the front door, but the name was unmistakably correct. Adam paused for a moment, trying to collect himself.

Was he really going to go inside and demand that Mary present herself? He didn't even know what name she had used; it had taken every ounce of his skill and talent to find out where she had hidden herself, let alone who she was pretending to be.

It would be easier if he entered the hotel under false pretences. Pretended to be a visiting dignitary--or better yet, someone from Bow Street with bad news to give to a young woman with dark hair, a terrible family event, so sorry to have to interrupt her time by the sea... but no. For Mary, he couldn't be anyone but himself.

A prickle went up Adam's spine. A tingle of awareness, subtle but potent. Before he could help himself, he turned his head.

There was someone in the gardens of the hotel. Behind the railings lay a small jungle of ferns and palms, a figure on a bench just visible in the tangle of foliage.

She was looking at him.

Mary.

Adam gasped before he could stop himself. For a moment the sheer unlikeliness of having found her, the surprise of it, all but stopped his heart.

He had come here pretending to himself that he would be able to find her through cunning alone. That the town, that Mary, would open up to him like a book. But at heart he'd been so desperate that he would have stayed here for months--years--searching for her.

But he hadn't needed to search. Not an unbearable amount, at any rate. Because Mary, rather than vanish back into the hotel when she had seen him coming down the street, had stayed where she was.

She had allowed herself to be found. Whatever came next, Adam hoped he would remember that.

He looked closer at Mary. She was almost hidden behind the fern and palm leaves, sitting rigidly on the bench. No book, no needlework; she had been sitting here to think, then.

To think of him? Oh, he hoped so.

Mary’s eyes were large, bright with what looked like fear. Her hands were trembling slightly in her lap; Adam swallowed, suddenly sure that he had made a terrible mistake.

‘I’ll leave.’ He spoke in hushed tones, as if Mary were a bird that would fly away. ‘I’ll leave now. I… I’m sorry.’

‘No.’ Mary’s answer came so quickly, so quietly, that Adam was almost sure he had imagined it. ‘Don’t.’

The last time they had seen one another had left a shadow. A sour, sick feeling that Adam felt in his throat, his chest. He tried to swallow it down, pushing away the guilt that came with looking at Mary again.

‘I’m sorry.’ Every person he’d ever pretended to be, the person he truly was; all of them, all of him, all sorry. ‘More sorry than you can imagine.’

‘It is I who must be sorry.’ Mary stopped, taking a deep breath; Adam waited, his heart tearing with every second that passed. ‘I—I cannot think what came over me. I have never spoken to anyone as I spoke to you. It was a deplorable loss of composure.’

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