And that’s what baths were for.
But it wasn’t like you were rolling your food in manure if you walked into the barn while eating.
As they finished their rolls, Sophia nodded. “Ready to meet the goats now?” she asked.
Caspian nodded. “If I must.”
Sophia narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I was just offering. I don’t suppose you need to follow me around.”
He didn’t have to come with her. She could have gone and checked on the goats already if she hadn’t been waiting for him.
Caspian grimaced. “I’m sorry. I’m not being very good company, am I?”
That was putting it nicely. “I’ll just get back to work,” Sophia said, edging toward the barn. “If you want to come, you can, but I’m sure you have better things to do with your time than meet the goats if you don’t like being in the barn.”
Sophia entered the barn. If he wanted to, he would follow, and if not, it wasn’t her problem. She didn’t care either way.
She didn’t have to be nice to the guard.
The goats were her job. Being nice to men wasn’t.
The familiar smell of earth and animals filled her nose as she hiked up her skirt and climbed over the fence into the goat pen, jumping from the top to land just to the side of a pile of goat poop.
See, it was perfectly easy to stay clean. There was no reason to avoid silly things like eating a roll in the goat pen.
She made her way through the stall and through the outer door to see the goats in their pen outside. It wasn’t a large pen, but it was enough for them to get some sunshine and fresh air.
The goats came running when they saw her, bleating loudly. No doubt they expected her to have food.
“I don’t have anything for you,” she said with a laugh as they ran toward her at top speed.
Mollie led the pack, jumping to put her front legs on Sophia. Sophia smiled as she gently set Mollie back down on the ground. She didn’t need Mollie jumping on Liliana and knocking her over, and the sooner the baby goat learned not to jump on people, the better.
“How are you doing?” Sophia asked, rubbing Mollie’s head. “I don’t suppose you all dumped your water, did you?” She stared at Ivy, the most likely candidate.
But when she looked down to the end of the pen, where the stable hands had placed full buckets of water earlier in the day, their water bucket was still upright.
“You haven’t knocked it over yet,” she said in wonder, staring at Ivy. “I guess you must not be trying hard enough.”
The bottom of the gate scraped against the fence as Caspian opened and shut it.
“Do they always knock over their bucket?”
“You followed me,” she said, a little surprised. She hadn’t expected him to actually follow her.
“What can I say? I couldn’t let a girl be braver than I was,” he said in a teasing tone, but there was some emotion in his voice that led her to believe maybe that was the only reason he was standing in her goat pen.
“Is that how it is?” Sophia said, mimicking his grin.
“Well, if the truth got out about me, I’d never live it down,” he said. “It’s hard enough being a guard without people thinking you can’t even walk into a goat pen.”
“I can see how that would be tough.” Sophia nodded her head. “It must be awfully tough being a guard and not wanting to touch your own horse.”
He grinned. “I don’t mind my horse, but I grew up with horses. I didn’t grow up with goats.”
Sophia shook her head. “How you don’t mind horses, but you don’t like goats, I have no idea. Goat poop is way easier to deal with than horse poop.”
Caspian took a tiny step back as one of the babies skittered closer to him. “And I’m just wondering how I managed to get on the topic of manure with the prettiest girl I’ve ever met at Rendon Manor.”
