Penelope knew she was awful at these types of conversations and Percy's reaction only confirmed this. She wanted to bang her head against the wall for saying something so unscrupulous. She refrained from doing this in consideration of her neighbors. This entire conversation seemed to be following the general lines of: irritate Percy, calm him down, irritate him even worse than before. Here went the calming portion!
"I'm going to ignore the dig at Charlie. What I meant to say was.." Penny paused for a moment; she didn't want her wording to infuriate him further. "Charlie is egotistical enough to think that he has me tied down for the nonce. Or maybe he doesn't care. He also doesn't think you're the type to try and, I don't know, make off with his woman or whatever."
She spoke earnestly, trying to get him to understand; hopefully he could sense the feeling in her voice and would see that she hadn't meant to insult him.