Chapter 12

Ellie woke up the following morning feeling a bit more amicably disposed toward her husband. It was difficult to maintain a sense of disgust with a man who so obviously adored children.

So he didn't take marriage as seriously as she would have liked. That didn't necessarily make him a bad person. Irreverent, perhaps, but not bad, and after all those years with her father, Ellie was starting to think that irreverent might be kind of nice. Clearly Charles had a way to go before he would be a husband she could trust with her full heart and soul, but the previous evening's escapade with Judith at least gave her some hope that they might be able to make a decent go at their marriage.

Not that she had any plans to fall into his little trap and try to seduce him. Ellie had no doubt as to who would be in control in such a situation. A fat lot she knew about seduction. She could picture it easily. She'd lean in to give him a kiss—which was the extent of what she knew how to do, really, and within seconds the seducer would become the seduced.

But to be fair, Charles had held up his end of the marriage bargain. He had arranged Ellie's financial accounts to her satisfaction, and she was more than eager to get to work. Sometime during the night Charles had slipped a piece of paper under the connecting door with all of the information Ellie would need to take control of her finances. It was remarkably thoughtful of him to have remembered to do this, and Ellie resolved to think of this kindness every time she felt like strangling her new husband—an impulse whose frequency she hoped would decrease.

Ellie left to visit her new solicitor after eating a quick bite of breakfast. No toast, of course; Mrs. Stubbs steadfastly refused to make it, which Ellie thought was just a bit uppity for a housekeeper. But then again, if all she could expect was another brittle, charred square that looked as if it might once have originated from a loaf of bread, she wasn't certain it was worth the effort to argue about it.

Then Ellie remembered what she'd seen the night before. Someone had readjusted the stove to her specifications. If she knew what she was doing—and she was still confident she did—then the entire Wycombe household ought to be enjoying lovely toast slathered with lovely jam for the rest of their lives.

Ellie made a mental note to look into it when she returned.

Ellie's new solicitor was a middle-aged man named William Barnes, and it was apparent that Charles had made it very clear that his wife was in charge of her own finances. Mr. Barnes was politeness personified, and he even expressed a large measure of respect for Ellie's financial knowledge and acumen. When she instructed him to put half of her money into a conservative account and half into the risky cotton venture, he clucked approvingly at her appreciation of the value of diversification.