“You have pets!” Harriet said. “The goats, the cat … they’re all your pets!”
“I’ll deny that to my dying breath.” His dangerous tone was belied by the twinkle in his eye. When he moved away, Harriet missed his warmth and immediately chided herself.
Sheffield unlocked a chest, scooped out a bowl full of feed, poured some into the bowl on the stanchion, and set the rest down for Bessie and Dusty. “That should occupy Daisy while you finish.”
Harriet bent back to the task of learning how to milk. All spills and splashes were immediately cleaned up by Oscar. Daisy was starting to get restless again by the time Harriet finished, and her hands and arms were cramping from the unfamiliar work. At this rate, she’d have muscular forearms like Big Jim. Who surprisingly wasn’t very big.
“All done.” She released Daisy. “Is Dusty next?”
Sheffield shook his head. “She’s Bessie’s kid from this spring, too young to breed yet.”
A bubble of warmth spread through her at this further evidence of his softer side. “You kept the family together.”
He grunted. “Let’s get this mug to Luigi before Oscar drinks it all.” Just as they were leaving the barn area, Big Jim turned the corner. “Have they been topside yet today?”
“No, Cap’n. Was just comin’ to get ’em.”
Sheffield turned back to the goats and patted his thigh as though calling dogs. “Walkies!”
All three goats brushed past in a mad scramble, loudly bleating and nearly knocking Harriet over in their haste to get to the ladder. They climbed without assistance, without waiting for Big Jim to follow, which he did with more speed than she and Sheffield, and were quickly out of sight.
It was almost as though Sheffield was reluctant to leave the quiet, private space, as was Harriet. Fresh air and daylight were good, but there was something about being alone with him in the near darkness. Rather than suffocating, it now felt like an embrace.
“Big Jim doesn’t seem to be especially big. Or tall.”
“Oh, he’s big. Ah, elsewhere.”
They reached the bottom of the ladder. Sheffield stepped to the side, his hand warm and large at the small of her back. Her foot on the bottom rung, she looked up at Sheffield, trying to decipher his expression. Muted daylight spilled down the hatch from two decks above, highlighting his sculpted features, hiding his eyes in shadow. She couldn’t see the playful man who kept pets at sea. Now he looked like the dangerous pirate again.
Bessie poked her head in the hatch opening above and bleated impatiently.
Harriet chuckled. “I believe you’re being summoned.”
“Coming, dear.” Sheffield subtly increased the pressure at the small of Harriet’s back, and they climbed the two ladders to the top deck.
Blinking in the bright sunlight, Harriet watched the sailors obligingly jump out of the way as Dusty and Daisy chased each other around the deck. After Sheffield gave Bessie the scratch behind her horn buds she was waiting for, she joined in the romp, too.
“I haven’t seen them on deck before.”
“You were below deck the first few days we were at sea. Since the storm, this is the first day it’s been calm enough to let them up.”
A large bush seemed to suddenly grow from the forward hatch and kept rising until Smitty appeared. Another bush popped up as he stepped aside, held by Norton, and then another, until the surgeon and two sailors had arranged three wooden barrels filled with bushes around the foremast.
Her eyes now adjusted to the bright light, Harriet squinted, still not believing her eyes. “Roses?”
“Yes.” Sheffield’s tone implied that every ship carried rose bushes.
“You are a man of many talents, Captain. Privateer, milk maid … and a horticulturist, too?”
One side of his mouth quirked up. “While her husband was trying to conquer the Continent, Josephine collected roses from all parts of the world. Even at the height of hostilities, any ship carrying rose specimens to the Empress was to be confiscated, not destroyed, by decree of Bonaparte himself.”
“And you never had occasion to deliver them to her?”
“Let’s say we never had to go quite that far.”
A wily pirate. Well, of course he’d have to be wily, to be successful. To survive. “Hostilities ended well over a year ago. Yet you still carry them on board.”
Sheffield gave a shrug and a lop-sided grin.
