Author's note - sorry for the delay in updating! I'm doing my best to write as fast as I can!

Lilith was to stay in the hospital at least another day, as she was still weak from the ordeal. And so she ordered Mary and Peter to the hospital to assist her. Christopher, who hardly went more than a few steps away from her at any time, eyed the androids with disgust and suspicion.

"If they offend you, you don't have to stay," Lilith told him when she caught him making faces at Mary. The android-maid was clipping Lilith's hair, though Lilith had opted to leave her hair mostly loose for comfort. The servant's featureless face betrayed no emotion at Christopher's mockery. The androids did not have any emotions to betray and even if they did, they would hardly be so foolish as to show it in Lilith's presence.

"Trying to get me to leave, dearest wife?" said Christopher. He gave her a wide, lazy smile, momentarily distracted.

"There's no need for you to be here. There's no need for you to-" she began, accepting a mirror from Mary's seven-fingered hand. She regarded herself for a moment, noting that the marks from her torment had vanished from her face. Her back was the only testament to her imprisonment.

"There's no need for me to do anything, or be anywhere," laughed Christopher. He was in shockingly high spirits, and had been rowdy all day. "Surely you've figured out that I never do a thing I don't want to do, Lilith."

"And from that I assume you want me to gather that you want to be here," she said. She passed the mirror back to Mary before rising unsteadily to her feet. Christopher made a move to help her but she accepted Mary's arm instead, with a gentle thank-you for her servant.

"I've always liked how smart you are," said Christopher. "Yes, I do want to be here."

Lilith did not ask why. It was what he wanted her to do. She was curious, of course, but her desire not to rise to Christopher's provocation was greater than her curiosity. As she sat down in a chair by the window, she waved Peter forward. She crossed her legs under her hospital gown - for she was still required to wear it - and accepted her tablet from him.

"This is the list I asked for yesterday?" she said to him.

He bowed. "Yes, madam - a list of everyone who has offered condolences or sent gifts, ranked in order of relative influence."

"We'll need to send thank-yous, of course. Have Paul draw them up and send them to me," said Lilith. She scrolled down the list. It appeared to be over a hundred names; business colleagues and friends of Christopher's. A few names stuck out, glowing in red.

"The President sent his good wishes, I see," said Lilith.

Christopher snorted very loudly. Lilith looked up at the sound. Her husband's look was scornful and positively furious. "Of course he would."

"He was very kind to me at Ascot, and he is a friend of-" she began, handing the tablet back to Peter.

"It's his job to be kind. He's a spectacular liar and if you think he gives a fuck about you or me-" started Christopher.

"It hardly matters, Christopher," replied Lilith. Drawing her hand over her thigh, she smoothed the skirt of the gown. "He sent his good wishes, and we shall send him a thank-you. I'll handwrite it and we'll both sign it. The less important ones we'll do by electronic signature."

Christopher gave a loud huff of irritation. "Why are you doing this, anyway? Aren't you supposed to be deathly ill?"

"It needs to be done, you know. Did you think you kept me around for my nasty habit of telling you hard truths?" she retorted. Her mockery was light-hearted, however, and not meant to bruise Christopher's delicate ego.

He grunted. "I had no idea it was so much damned work, what you do."

"I'm thrilled you've come to understand it," replied Lilith, sarcasm heavy in her voice. Now she waved for Peter again, and he came.

"Mrs. Farrar?" he asked, his mild voice even more deferential than usual, if that were possible.

"Do you have a list of people who have asked to visit?" she inquired.

"Yes, madam, but none of them is allowed to," replied Peter. He bowed his head.

"I beg your pardon-" she began. It was, of course, not Peter who cut her off. Peter would never have done that, it was so far against his programming and her training. Until the hijack, not a single android had ever interrupted her.

"That's my fault, Lilith," said Christopher. He heaved himself out of his chair and ambled about the room, hands in his pockets. "I told everyone you were too weak to have visitors."

"That was not your place," replied Lilith.

"For Christ's sake, Lilith! We nearly died! Don't we get a week off!" shouted Christopher. He ripped his hands out of his pockets and waved them wildly, rounding first on Lilith, and then on no one in particular. "Can't they leave us along for one fucking day of our lives? Can't we not have to pretend for long enough to catch our breath after nearly having fucking been murdered?"

Lilith waited until he finished to speak. Even then, she let a pause hang in the air, and settle over the two of them, until the silence became pregnant and Christopher's eyes flickered back and forth with discomfort at it.

"Are you finished?" she said. Her tone was soft and, she hoped, dangerous.

"Lilly-" he began.

She let him go no further than the ridiculous sobriquet. "You do not speak to me that way. I am not yours to shout at. I am not your property, not some android you can vent your anger at. Do you understand?"

Christopher sank down in his chair. "That wasn't for you."

"Then go shout at someone else," she said, her voice once again serene.

"Do you really mean that?" He asked it with his head cocked and his eyebrows raised. Lilith had no idea why at that moment his beauty struck her so forcefully. She saw how lovely he was, how beautiful his eyes were when he gazed at her from under a brow creased with worry.

"Of course not," she retorted. "I'd never recommend anything that stupid."

"You're even worse tempered than you usually are," he snapped at her. He was peevish, of course, and that was to be expected.

"Did you expect anything else?" she replied. The jab had been meant to wound her. It did not.

"Of course I did," he protested. His peevishness had not provoked her, and he seemed to hope he could now with indignation. "I expected the wife I have come to know."

"And you've come to know me as sunny and cheerful, Christopher?" she said with disdain. She let the insult to his intelligent layer her voice as thickly as possible. He was an idiot for believing it, if he did.

It seemed to throw him. He paused, opened his mouth, closed it, and then, with his face in the most beautiful frown capable to a mortal, spoke.

"Maybe if you continue on like this, I'll consider a divorce."

"Do you want a divorce?" Lilith asked. He was bluffing, she was almost sure of it. If he was pretending, she ought to call him out on it. If he wasn't - well, honesty and bluntness would be the best policy in that case.

"Maybe," he said. The tone was elusive but not playful. He was not teasing her as he usually did. This was more malicious and less impish.

"If you want a divorce, you can have one," she told him. She kept her tone even and her eyes fixed on him. Not a single part of her broke rank in her solemnity. "But don't tease me with the idea if you don't mean it."

"Why? Do you really want to be married to me?" he said, scorn heavy in his voice. 

"Yes," she said, quite simply.

"I had no idea you liked me so much," he said, and now a sly grin was on his face. Had he been taunting her all along, trying to get her to admit she liked being married to him? 

"I don't," she said, to disillustion him.

"Then maybe I don't want to be married to you anymo-"

Lilith would have let him go on had she been herself. Had she not recently been tortured and half-killed for the sake of the man now taunting her, she would have kept her peace and scorned his taunts. She would have sat silent and been satisfied with not rising to his challenge. She would not have let her lips bare her teeth in a snarl, nor her eyes flash, nor her voice crackle with disgust and hatred as it did now, when she said:

"This is my livelihood. It's all I have. If you want a divorce, fine - have one. But don't tease me with it. I have nothing else in this world but this job and I will lose it if we agree to it, but don't you-"

Christopher, belligerent as he was, braved the lightning flash of her temper to scorn her."Nothing in this world? You're one of the richest women in the Western Union, for Christ's sake-"

"I'm not! While we're married, I live by your charity, but I have no wealth of my own!" she snarled. Her hands, which had been folded in her lap with the most ladylike gesture she could assume, now raked the arms of her chair with sharp nails. "All I have is what little I have earned! My father didn't shit money like yours did! All I have is what I have made for myself and you will never again dangle that security before me for the sadistic pleasure of teasing me!"

There was a very long pause. In the history of their marriage, Lilith had never once spoken so harshly or so honestly. She had insulted her husband, but never in such candid fury. He sat in silence, his head turned in profile to her. 

"Forgive me, Lilith. I did not mean to hurt you," said Christopher. His voice was very soft and very small. "I did not know you could be hurt."

Lilith said absolutely nothing. Her husband's humility would have given her satisfaction had she not hated him so very much in that instant. The hatred was uncharacteristic for her, and it was a shame for it to spoil the Christopher's equally uncharacteristic humbleness, but it did.

Peter broke the silence that had charged the air between husband and wife, that had kept them both mute and quiescent.

"Madam, the Earl of Essex is here to see you," said the android.

Had there been anything keeping Christopher by Lilith's side, Henry's arrival had driven it away. Christopher rose in silence and did not look once at Lilith as he picked up his jacket and left the room.

After a very long moment had elapsed, Lilith addressed the android waiting so patiently at the door.

"I thought Mr. Farrar said-" began Lilith. Her voice was not unsteady, though she was unsettled.

"Ah, the illustrious Mr. Farrar could not keep me away if he threatened me with death," crowed Henry as he swept into the room in a flurry of dark-haired charm. "And he very nearly did when he passed me in the hall."

Lilith did not reply. She rose to her feet, more steady than the had been a moment before, and only rolled her eyes with minimal disdain when Henry lifted her hand and kissed it with far more warmth than was required.

She settled into her chair once more and Henry took the one opposite.

"How are you, Lilith?" he asked. His open sincerity was so very different from the cagey, elusive animal that was Christopher's limited honesty.

"Bored and weak," she said. She could be genuine with Henry, and so she was.

"An alarming state of affairs for you, I'd imagine," said Henry.

"You have no idea. 

"The police had Christopher give a press conference, you know," said Henry. His voice, so full of light sarcasm, could have seemed genuine to someone less familiar with deception than Lilith. But she could hear the mockery in it. "He got up in front of half the Western Union and gave an impassioned speech. He started out by expressing his thanks for being rescued, then moved on to his hatred of your tormentors, and concluded with a deep concern for your critical status. He was in floods of tears. It was very moving."

Lilith had enough gratitude towards her husband for that act of keeping up their public appearance to pay him the honest compliment he deserved. "Christopher is excellent at making people believe what he wants them to believe. It's why he's such a skilled liar."

"With everyone except you, apparently," Henry pointed out, with smile.

"Because he has no need to lie to me," said Lilith. "It would give him nothing."

"You seem very confident that he has never lied to you - how can you be sure, sds if he is as talented at falsehood as you say he is?" asked Henry. He knew her very well indeed, to even consider it. 

"Because there's only one better liar than him," replied Lilith.

"And that is?" challenged Henry with brows raised.

"Me." It was a simple statement, and a true one.

Henry positively purred when she said it. Leaning back in his chair and regarding her with half-closed eyes he said, "Clever girl."

"Condescend to me one more time, your lordship, and I'll never speak to you again," Lilith threatened, but in such a flat tone that there was little anger in it.

"Forgive me, Lilith," said Henry. He was quiet, but after a moment, he looked uneasy. His eyes flickered to Lilith's left hand more than once. Giving a sigh, she decided to release him from the torment of thinking something and not saying anything.

"There's something else you want to say."

"Yes...forgive me for this, but I'm not sure Christopher was lying." His tone was hesitant and he skirted about his words as though they might bite.

"I've heard many people say that. All his lovers, for example, tell me he wasn't lying when he told them how much he loved them," said Lilith. She waved her hand once before going on. "They've all been wrong."

"I'm not many people. Lilith, his concern for you...it was genuine, I'm sure of it. No one could feign so convincingly. Not Christopher. Not even you," he said, and bowed his head in flattery to Lilith's formidable talent for deception.

"Christopher was frightened, and I comforted him," Lilith explained. She allowed for her impatience to be evident in her voice. She had no wish to revisit Christopher's fear, nor her attempts to soothe him. It had been unpleasant enough at the time. She gave a dismissive wave of her hand as she went on. "He may have been grateful, but as for genuine concern-"

"Why are you so determined to think that he's indifferent to you?" demanded Henry.

"Because-" she began.

"You are firmly convinced that his lack of genuine emotion for everyone else means that he would have a similar lack of real sentiment for you," said Henry. His words flowed like a river's babbling; fast, smooth, wild, and utterly pleasing to hear. "Have you considered that you might be wrong about that?"

"Not for a single second," she told him. Her words were slower than his, but no less measured.

"Liar." He rebuked her with a single word, but to her the word was hardly an insult. It was her title.

"Yes - but not about this," she said. Her rebuke was as sharp as his but far calmer. 

It earned her a smile for her wit. A brief grin curved over Henry's face as he looked up at her with his head cocked. His dark eyes glowed with warmth for a moment, before he ran one hand through his inky hair and his face fell.

"Are you so firmly set on believing that no one has any real feeling for you?"

Lilith got up and turned away. The way he said it made it sound as though she was practically an android herself, so devoid of emotion that she was convinced that everyone else was as cold as she. It was an untruth, of course, and one that Christopher had accused her of. Lilith was not devoid of feeling. She controlled it, of which she was proud.

"Well, I can't speak for anyone but myself," said Henry. Lilith knew what he would say next. She had known for a very long time and it had never once concerned her. "But Lilith, all I know is that I love you."

"Then you're among the minority," she said, and settled once more into her seat.

"Perhaps, yes, since I love the Lilith who is truthful with me, when everyone else loves the Mrs. Farrar who lies to their faces," he said. He cocked his head, as Christopher had, but his playfulness was kind and pleased Lilith rather than disgusting her.

Lilith smiled. It was a small one, but Henry noticed it and replied with a broad grin of his own.

"You're a shameless flatterer," she told him.

"I know I am! Why else do you think people like me?"