“I'm sorry about what happened today in the or-angery,” Charles said softly.

“I'm sorry, too,” Ellie said in a bitter voice.

Charles tried to ignore her harsh tone as he sat beside her on the bed. “I know that you truly loved those plants.”

“So did everyone else.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that someone doesn't want to see me happy. Someone is purposefully ruining my efforts to make Wycombe Abbey my home.”

“Ellie, you are the Countess of Billington. That very fact means that Wycombe Abbey is your home.”

“Not yet. I need to put my mark on it. I need to do something to make at least a piece of it mine. I tried to be helpful by fixing the oven.”

Charles sighed. “Perhaps we shouldn't mention the oven.”

“I did not set the rack incorrectly,” she said, her eyes flashing fire. “Someone tampered with my efforts.”

He let out a long breath and placed his hand on hers. “Ellie, no one thinks badly of you. It is not your fault that you're a bit inept when it comes to—”

“Inept! Inept?” Her voice rose halfway to a shriek. “I am not—” She got into a bit of trouble here, for in her haste to jump off the bed and plant her hands on her hips in offended fury, she forgot that Charles was sitting on a corner of her blanket, and she tumbled onto the floor, landing rather clumsily on her bottom. She staggered to her feet, tripping twice—once on her skirt and once on the blanket—and finally ground out, “I am not inept.”

Charles, for all of his efforts to remain sensitive to her distress, could not keep his mouth from quivering into a smile. “Ellie, I didn't mean—”

“I'll have you know I have never been anything but ept.”

“Ept?”

“I have always been supremely organized, brilliantly capable—”

“Ept?”

“I don't procrastinate and I don't shirk my duties. I get things done.”

“Is that a word?”

“Is what a word?” she burst out, looking very annoyed with him.

“Ept.”

“Of course not.”

“You just said it,” Charles said.

“I did no such thing.”

“Ellie, I'm afraid that you—”

“If I did,” she said, flushing slightly, “then that ought to prove how upset I have become. Using nonsense words. Hmmmph. It is very unlike me.”

“Ellie, I know that you are an extremely intelligent woman.” He waited for her to say something and when she didn't, he added, “It's why I married you.”

“You married me,” she bit off, “because you needed to save your fortune and you thought I would overlook your affairs.”

He colored slightly. “It is certainly true that my shaky financial situation had a great deal to do with the haste with which we married, but I assure you that having an affair was the last thing on my mind when I decided to wed you.”

She let out a ladylike snort. “One has only to look at your list to know that you are lying.”