The Seduction of Suzanne by Amelia Hart Page A

in her hands.
    “Perhaps you could polish these for me,” she said, putting them in his hands.
    “Certainly madam,” he replied, receiving them willingly.
    When she returned with the corkscrew she saw he’d put a fine shine on the two glasses. She handed over the bottle and set to work with the barbecue and the crayfish. She’d put them to sleep in the freezer earlier, and now she pulled them out – cautiously checking to see there were no twitches of life remaining – and dispatching each of them with a decisive blow from a cleaver, lengthwise. Onto the hotplate they went with a sizzle of butter.
    “You are a remarkable woman!” he exclaimed, watching this show.
    “Dad used to butcher his own homekill. He’d get me to help, when I was old enough. He thought people who eat meat should be prepared to look the animal in the face, and be grateful for the gift of a life. Once you’ve taken a cow or sheep apart, a crayfish is pretty straightforward.”
    “So your dad was a man with strong values?”
    “The best. I try to live up to him every day.”
    “You must miss him.”
    “Every day.”
    She went inside to get bread and garlic butter, setting them in the centre of the table along with her mismatched cutlery and salad dressed with balsamic vinaigrette. She hadn’t bothered with a tablecloth, never did. Ironing was a terrible waste of time.
    At the barbecue she stood over the crayfish, inhaling deeply. Two more minutes and they’d be done, she judged by the scent and the colour of the shell, which was beginning to redden. She hovered, plate at the ready, until the crucial moment then whipped them off with long-handled tongs and placed Justin’s plate in front of him, her own to his left rather than opposite, so she wouldn’t have to look at him directly and keep losing her train of thought.
    “Dig in,” she said, plonking down into her own chair and starting without ceremony.
    “This is a bit intimidating without a bib,” he said lightly.
    “A bib,” she repeated, a forkful of perfectly cooked crayfish halfway to her mouth. She looked at him as if he were crazy.
    “That’s how we do it back home. Only we call these lobsters.”
    “A bib,” she said again, this time sniggering and shaking her head. “Sorry, I don’t keep bibs on hand. I could get you an old T-shirt of dad’s to put over your pretty clothes.” Not that it would fit of course.
    “That’s very hospitable of you,” he said gravely, “but I think I’ll just man up.” He did an ostentatious little neck-cracking, arm limbering ritual like some prize fighter, rolled up his sleeves and started to eat.
    She grinned at this byplay, spreading a lavish smear of butter over her crayfish to melt and ooze down inside the shell. She ate as always with swift economy of motion, and in silence. It was not until she was halfway through her meal that she tuned in to Justin’s table manners.
    They were exquisitely perfect.
    Suzanne’s mother had been murder on table manners, drilling Suzanne mercilessly on the dictates of Miss Manners until she could comport herself like a lady during a meal, even at ten years old. But then her mother had been a totally different woman from Suzanne, unable to bear rugged, uncivilised Great Barrier for the lifetime of marriage she had promised Peter, her husband. And the Barrier was Suzanne’s home. So Suzanne leaned her elbows on the table, pulled her crayfish apart with her hands and sucked the juices off her fingers, wiping her chin with the back of her hand.
    Justin sat straight, laid his cutlery down between mouthfuls, used the nutcracker and fork with precision and didn’t drip anything anywhere. He did it all unselfconsciously, the ingrained habits of a lifetime of proper conduct at the dinner table.
    So much for needing a bib!
    She watched him in bemusement, absently poking a skewer through the delicate tubing of the lower legs to get those sweetest pieces she loved.
    Weird.
    As he neared the end of