"You don't give up, do you?"
The serving girl, a slight thing with hair the color of wheat, huffed as she placed the last drink on her tray before a patron whose face was half-hidden behind a hand of cards. She turned and brushed past Castor, who was smiling like an imbecile as he trailed dutifully in her wake, towering over her small frame.
"Come now, I only offered to buy you a drink." he said amiably. She didn't slow her pace, nor did he.
"Yes. Four times." she said, impatiently, tucking a stray bang behind her ear. He marveled to himself over how quickly she was able to put distance between them on those short legs of hers.
"I would happily buy a woman of your fine caliber four drinks." he declared boldly, earning him a noise of disgust. Either she had heard something along those lines before, never wanted to hear anything of the sort out of a man's mouth again, or quite possibly both; it would take far more than a single noise to deter Castor Montelle. "We can toast to your health and this fine establishment."
"Look." She turned on her heel, and he nearly ran her over in his haste to keep up. "I appreciate the offer, but my shift isn't over for another two hours." She swept her arm across the room in a grand gesture, indicating the many patrons, both male and female, who filled the room. "Why don't you find some other girl to work up into a lather?"
"Because none can hope to compare!" he exclaimed, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Everyone could use a drink from time to time. You can never turn a drink down in the face of blossoming romance."
As if on cue, a man at the nearest table raised his drink to the both of them, uttered some inarticulate cheer in their general direction, and proceeded to slump over the table so fast and hard that his head bounced once with a thunk. The drink toppled from his fingers, off the table, the tankard coming to rest at the barmaid's feet.
She looked far more unimpressed than Castor was comfortable with at that juncture.
"I'll pass." she said, her voice frosty. She leaned down and plucked the tankard from the floor before straightening. "Besides, this is no time for a woman to be fancying strangers. Not with all the disappearances that have been going on lately. First that dancer from the marketplace, now Bern. This place isn't the same without her."
He moved as though he was about to place an hand on her shoulder reassuringly, but the tray in her hand came up like battlements between them. He drooped a bit.
"Honestly. Just take your pick, I'm sure there are plenty of girls here with less sense than me."
"Well, they don't have to be girls--" His mouth closed as she rolled her eyes and stalked off. He wondered if it had been something that he had said.
Seating himself across from the now snoring drunkard, he sighed forlornly. "I miss the flowers back home; the roses here have far too many thorns."