The next morning brought the return of Kitty's uncomfortable new routine of seeing that Walter was properly shaven after breakfast. He seemed almost determined to goad her into killing him, for he applied endearments with particular venom as she prepared her work station. He sneered when she brushed the foam onto his face but afterwards- afterwards, with her hand holding his skin taut, he stopped talking entirely. His throat bobbed, his breathing grew a little ragged and Kitty would have thought him nervous if she hadn't chanced that one glimpse yesterday. She had little doubt that she'd find the same expression if she dared to truly look today. Naturally, she might have explained yesterday's misunderstanding and handed him the razor with the caveat that she would stay to ensure he behaved himself, but she felt perversely that she wanted to do this for him. If she could give him nothing else of herself, he could have this. And it was curiously breathtaking, holding this much power over him with something so simple, yet so personal.

Lunch saw the return of Patience...and disaster. After much cajoling, Walter agreed only from boredom, lost the first hand and -sticking to yesterday's rules- Kitty thought to ask him a more pleasant question than he'd aked her.

"Do you remember your first kiss?"

"Vividly." But he wasn't smiling. The next hand was his and he returned fire, scoffing a little when she said she had only a vague memory of some visiting American boy with metal on his teeth, when she was fourteen. "Of course you'd forget," he observed with studied disinterest.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, darling. I was merely remarking on how little such intimacies seem to mean to you."

Charlie, again! Always there between them and he refused to forget. "Can't we be friends," she asked in exasperation.

"I rather think not."

But she refused to let him drive her from the room and they continued playing Patience with grim determination; a bloodless battlefield. Kitty won the next hand and challengingly asked him, if he remembered the kiss so vividly, what was the girl like?

"In hindsight, she was horrible. But you'd know, darling, you were there."

"Me?" Kitty put a hand to her breast in shock. Walter stared back levelly despite the high color in his cheeks at admitting he'd gotten well into his twenties without kissing anyone until her. "So you were a...?" She spared him the word 'virgin'. "That's sweet," she said with a little smile and surprising sincerity. And really, it was. Men fussed constantly about a woman 'saving herself' for him, making her into a conquest, but she knew no one who could claim to have ever been a man's first. Surely all men had to take a first lover at some point, but it didn't spoil his matrimonial prospects and so wasn't talked about with nearly as much regularity. She had been forced to curb her own desires many times when hands began wandering or kisses grew too heated. "To think you were waiting."

"Lack of opportunity," he explained coldly, "don't flatter yourself."

"Perhaps I shouldn't," she grew cold in her turn, hating him for pushing away yet another attempt at peace. "Perhaps," she threw her handful of cards down onto the bed, uncaring when they scattered, "Perhaps it's deeply unflattering to know that I was simply a pretty girl in the right place at the right time. You could have danced with any girl that season and 'fallen in love,'" the words had a sneering emphasis. "You never loved me! You wanted to sleep with me, and you didn't want to go back to Hong Kong alone! I could have been anybody. You didn't know me, really."

Walter let his own cards fall, more than a little crumpled from his clutching them. "Don't pretend that breaks your heart when you only married me so Doris wouldn't go first!"

"That's true," Kitty stood to leave, smoothing her dress just for something to do with her hands. "We were, both of us, in this for the wrong reasons. I didn't love you, and you didn't really love me. But you never tried, Walter."

"I gave you everything you could ever ask for," he insisted, fidgetting with the covers so as not to look at her.

"And I appreciated that, but it wasn't enough." Some of the fight went out of her at the defeated way he sat. He'd misunderstood her again. "Yes, you were a good husband, but you never talked to me." He glanced up, and would have protested but Kitty, realizing he was listening for once had seated herself again and she stopped him with a finger to his lips. "Not about anything important. I've learned more about you today in two hours than you ever told me in two years."

"What would you have said," he asked when she moved her finger, "if I'd told you on our wedding night that I had no idea what I was doing? You'd have laughed," he answered for her, miserably triumphant in the assumption he was right.

Her temper wanted to flare again, but she held it in check. "I barely knew more than you," she informed him quietly. "And if you'd asked, you might have done a better job of it." He flinched and turned bright red and Kitty realized too late that she'd phrased that in the most horrible way possible. "Oh, God, that's not what I meant-"

"Will you go away now, Kitty?" He slid down in the bed, turning his back to her. "I think I'd like to rest."

And she went only because she knew his ears were closed to anything else no matter what she might say. Waddington's presence that night was again nothing short of a relief as he kept the two of them laughing, their thoughts far from each other. But after seeing him to the door, Kitty returned to her husband's room.

"Do you need anything else?"

"Not tonight, thank you." For a moment, his mouth hung open as if he meant to say more, but he cut himself off before he could hurl any more barbs at her.

Kitty nodded. "Goodnight, Walter.

As she left, she thought she heard a faint "Goodnight, darling," with no hint of venom to spoil the sweetness.