Just Another Unambitious Woman

Chapter 10: Strangers

Captain Sebastian Talbot cursed himself for at least the hundredth time as he pulled his boots out of the mud. Bloody seaside! When he received his friend's letter, he expected warm sandy beaches with an amiable smell of salty water drifting about, lingering on the clothes and on the hair of sun-kissed tavern waitresses. When you think of Whitby, there's nothing about mud there and there most certainly isn't anything to say about rain.

But, alas! Here he was, his boots drenched and his pantaloons muddy almost to the knee.
As he stepped to the more solid road leading from the muddy depths of the traveller's respite to the nearest inn, he almost cringed at the thought of the wet and sloppy trail he was leaving behind. He had a distinct feeling that the leather on his boots was beyond repair and the hardened material made him queasy, reminding him of the way his boots were soaked in blood during the Spanish war. Well, at least he wouldn't have minded dying in Corunna - his resting place would have bathed in the sun all year long, instead of being washed in and out by the eternal drizzle of the British coastline.

Shaking his hair out, he pried the heavy oak door open and ducked to avoid a wooden pint that looked as if it was aimed at his head. It belonged to a very flustered tavern wench with a smatter of freckles on her pointed nose and even if he tried, he could not understand a word she was saying, only hoping it seemed like an apology. Sebastian grimaced in what he thought was a good natured smile and sat down at the nearest table, hoping that her gesturing hand indicated the action that was hereby accomplished. Pulling his cloak down to avoid being mistaken for a scarecrow, he almost put it on the chair, but caught the expectant grin of the wench and stopped in his tracks. What was it now? The girl opened her little mouth and formed a string of incoherent words that slurred and jumbled across the room, making him more confused than he was while taking orders in the middle of cannon blasts.

"I beg your pardon?" he asked and tried to lower the unfortunate coat on the chair again, but got it pulled out of his hands among more incomprehensible sounds that sounded to him as an unlucky cross between a Highlander's dialect and dog whining. But by then, the wench was tugging him by the sleeves in a rather forward manner and while Captain Talbot normally never presumed things, if it was not absolutely necessary, he now began presuming, quite frantically, in fact, that she found him charming and wanted to bed him, to which he was not particularly disposed at the moment. Well, that was the nicest and most optimistic presumption out of many, one of those ending with his body tossed in a back alley after having his heart torn out.

Sebastian, for Lord's sake, wasting time with silly thoughts like a school boy! Do something! he almost chided himself, but decided against it, instead pulling on her hands to stop her. She turned around, tugging again at the poor cufflinks as if she expected them to break free. He almost saw her pocketing them in her strange décolletage with a wicked smile, but shook his head, trying to explain her what he needed. She was faster than him and whatever he wanted to say had been lost in a stream of the Babel language. He understood her even less than he did before.

"I'm sorry?" he tried with the most neutral face he could summon and began to collect his things. Better find another inn, thought the prospects of that were quite grim.

"No, no!" she exclaimed and grabbed the coat again in a firm grip, almost ripping it up more than it was already, while spewing more and more words that lost their meaning even before they reached him. When he would not respond to her, she sighed and left the coat to fall, while she turned round and swiftly got around him. Before Sebastian could react, he felt her small hands firmly on his lower back, their warmth seeping through the cold clothing that he wore. She gave him a little push, but Sebastian shied away in a spasm of discomfort, knocked into someone and as a consequence, got something sticky and unpleasant smelling stuck all over his boots.