"I've got a bit I came aboard with," he replied. "I just wasn't sure they take coin of the realm here. I feared I might have to bring in a goat for trade, or something." He grinned at her. "What the hell. We'll try the town, then." He offered his arm.

"It's all silver; I'm sure they'll take it," Elaine assured him, looking pleased as she slipped her arm through his, very ladylike, with her head up and her shoulders back, as she'd learned at the convent. She gave him a demure little nod-- with a not-so-demure little quirk of her mouth. "Lead on, sir."

He patted her hand as he led her down the stairs.

A scant half-hour later they had made their way to the town square, relatively uninterrupted, leaving Honore both amused and disgusted. "Have these people never heard of a curfew?" Honore said after the third guard merely grunted and let them pass. "What if I abducted you? Not," he added, "that I would have any idea where to go from here. It all looks like untended fields for miles."

"Well, if you really were abducting me, wouldn't untended fields suit your purpose just fine?" Elaine retorted impishly. "You forget, women are the ones in control here. I think they assume that if you were trying to abduct me, I would have had you stopped by now."

She scanned the square, then pointed toward a well-lit building across the way. "Does that look like a public house to you?" she asked.

"That is not the point," he said, in the spirit of argument. "I'm sure that anywhere in the world if you objected loudly enough in public someone would ask you what was going on, but these people . . . . " He followed her gesture toward the building. "Looks like," he said cheerfully. "Anyway, can't hurt. The worst they'll do is turn us out." He let go her arm long enough to hold open the door for her. "I hope."

She grinned and picked up her skirts to step into the pub, trying to look-- she thought-- regal and charming. "They did warn you about the red beer, didn't they?" she asked. "I've only ever had a sip, but they gave my father one once and the man got positively silly," she informed him. "He proclaimed his love to my stepmother, her father, and the Sea Witch all in the course of a half-hour. He might've done a few others, too, I don't remembe---"

She trailed off as she realized that hers was the only voice in the place. The entire establishment had gone silent when they entered.

"Oh." He tightened his grip on her shoulder, looking around the room at all the eyes looking back at him. Never had he felt quite so conspicuous. Or so tall. "Should we go back?" he asked. Someone here might understand Common, but the odds of them understanding Aquitainean were slim.

She gave him an amused look. "Frightened already?" she answered, flashing him an encouraging look, not seeming bothered by the stares now that she expected them-- and now that some of the denizens of the pub were turning back to their own meals and drinks. "Anyway, if we leave now , we'll look stupid or like scaredy-cats, and someone will think it's jolly fun to prank us."

She lifted his hand from her shoulder and gave it a squeeze as she tugged him toward an empty table. "It'll be fine; you'll see."

"If you insist." He let himself be pulled along, feeling, if nothing else, culturally in keeping. Although he did managed to escape around her and pull out a seat. "Unnerved," he admitted. "I don't know if this is curiosity or hostility."

Again, she looked tickled as she took her seat and waited for him to take his, before signalling to the bar. She frowned as the barkeep looked away, uncertain if he had seen her, but then smiled reassuringly at Honore. "At least we don't have to worry about eavesdropping," she pointed out. "If anybody does anything that seems hostile, we'll leave immediately, all right? We're here to be adventurous, anyway."