Chapter Five
One of the things that had interested her very much was how empowered she had felt by the whole process of bargaining. Always with James there had been an element of that. She had discovered, as soon as she began to let men look at her, or touch her, that their desire for her was intense, to the extent that sometimes it seemed to create a kind of madness in their brain, an inability to reason, to think of anything else but the fulfilment of their lust. She had found that in this state boys were easy to manipulate, almost laughably so, and she had had fun with it. Now, when the stakes were higher, there was an element of danger in the way she was flirting with the lord and teasing him, but she could not resist it when she found what power she had. Thus when she thought about a
