Free Road to Berry Edge, The by Elizabeth Gill Page B

eyes gave them away and Susannah had seen greed and lust and want and excitement in them, but his eyes were as cool and grey as the river beyond the window and told her nothing.
    She was on her feet now, though she hadn’t been conscious of getting up. He was taller than Susannah and she was quite tall for a woman.
    â€˜Good evening. I’m Susannah Seaton.’ She held out her hand and he took it and smiled.
    â€˜Robert Berkeley. I hope I’m not intruding.’
    His voice didn’t betray his origins. Susannah knew how to treat men, they were usually so eager, clumsy, nervousor over-confident, revealing themselves for what they were, ignorant about women, their needs overwhelming their intelligence. She despised them all, though she had learned not to hate them. She made them pay dearly for what they had. With their money she had rented this big house which overlooked the Wear and furnished it sparingly with beautiful things. She bought clothes and books and wine, the best food, telling herself that she and Claire deserved all those things.
    The men she took now she had selected very carefully indeed. She was half inclined to tell this one that he couldn’t stay because she had never taken a man her own age into her bed - it worried her - but then Hardisty would be offended and Hardisty was too valuable to lose. She tried to think what young men might be like and couldn’t, and then she had a sudden desire to find out what he was like, whether he was just as selfish and uneducated as the others. He would have to be to get so far so young, he would have to be ruthless and dangerous and ready to cut the ground from under other people’s feet, and he didn’t look anything like that.
    â€˜Come near the fire,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it a shocking night. Too cold to be outside.’
    He drew nearer and Susannah didn’t know what to say.
    â€˜Would you like some wine?’ she said, escaping across the room.
    â€˜Yes, please.’
    Susannah decided to be bold. She gave him the wine, looked straight at him and said, ‘Is it something special that you want?’
    â€˜Special?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Yes, you,’ he said.
    Susannah was rather pleased about that. She led him into the other room, the bedroom which had a huge bay window and looked across the river, and by firelight she lit candles.It was a plain room with a big bed and good but not heavy oak furniture. She drew the curtains around the windows, reflecting that although she was wearing ordinary everyday clothes, no make up, no perfume, she was wearing the kind of silk and lace frothy underwear which men liked.
    Susannah went to him, touched him, just put her fingertips on the front of his shirt to see what he would do and he gathered her into his arms and kissed her very gently on the mouth. Susannah was astonished. Men never did that and she never let them. They came to her to slake their hungers, often without any thought or any preliminaries. They did not come to her to kiss her sweetly on the mouth like that. He sensed her reluctance and stopped.
    â€˜I’ve got it wrong already,’ he said ruefully.
    Susannah was completely disarmed. She didn’t know what to say.
    â€˜You’d better tell me right now if there are other things I’m not allowed to do. I don’t want to be thrown out, it’s too cold.’
    â€˜It isn’t that, it’s just that people don’t.’
    â€˜Don’t they? And I was so sure that it was the place to start. Forgive me, I’m a beginner.’
    There was a carefully controlled hunger in him, but even when she gave herself to him freely and pressed against him it didn’t alter anything in the way that she would have imagined. Part of Susannah waited for him to lose control so that she could dislike him. When he didn’t she tried to make him do so. The embrace became a battleground to her. Her underclothing was one of