If she’d ever wondered if she was the seductive type, she did not wonder any longer.
Which might make her next proposition a bit tricky.
One thing at a time.
“A housekeeper?” Dougal repeated, surprised. “But we have a housekeeper. The indomitable Mrs. Hill.”
“I found one better suited to your household.” She sounded prim, even to her own ears.
He smiled at her as though she was lovable. She wanted to move closer, to lean into him.
“What are you trying to say, Meg?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think Mrs. Hill is happy here. More to the point, I think she is making Charlie unhappy.”
“And you won’t have that?” he asked, quoting her directly.
“No.”
“Good. As it happens, neither will I.”
“Oh.”
“You’ve found a replacement?”
“I have. A Mrs. Cricket from the village.”
“Mrs. Cricket and Mr. Canterbury. I’ve found myself in some sort of ridiculous storybook.”
“She’s very cheerful and capable,” Meg assured him. She’d asked Mrs. Chan from the shop in town for recommendations. “And she can start straightaway.”
“What do I do with Mrs. Hill?”
Meg swallowed her first suggestion, which was neither polite nor pretty. Noticing, Dougal laughed. “You can retire her to a cottage or move her to one of your houses that you don’t frequent or else offer her a fine letter of recommendation,” Meg said.
“I was sure you were going to say death by fire ant hill.”
“She’s not… evil,” Meg allowed. “Just too conventional for this estate. And you deserve to be happy and comfortable in your own house, surely.”
“There’s a thought.”
“Your Grace, wouldyou be so kind as to take my virtue?”
Eek, no. Quite aside from the fact that she technically had no virtue to take, unless such things grew back, Dougal would never agree if she addressed him by his title.
“Alas, I seem to have stumbled into your bedroom naked.”
That was no better.
Blast.
Why was this so difficult? Society mavens would have it that a lady was in great danger of ending up naked every moment she went about with a chaperone. Well, here Meg was, with the best chaperone—an elderly woman who didn’t give a fig for convention—and she still had yet to find herself naked.
Agreeingto a night of sweaty pleasure would be so much easier than proposing one.
A regrettable choice of words, even in her own head. There would be no proposal. And if there were, she would have to say no. She wasn’t fit to be a duchess, even were one to ignore the paint on the sleeve of her nightgown. Not lingerie or a fine transparent muslin chemise. But instead, her plain, ordinary nightgown, for heaven’s sake.
This seduction business was harder than it looked.