I do NOT own Once Upon A Time. If I did, I wouldn't have tried to sink ship Rumbelle last night...
CHAPTER 1
Spring - A Small Farm Near the Enchanted Forest
"Milah! You can't marry him," quarreled Gerta, tossing her glossy golden braids behind her. Her brilliant blue eyes sparkled like sunshine on ice. "He's too short, too ugly, and too old for you," she added with an angry flounce as she threw herself on the bed that the three sisters shared in the loft above their father's one room cottage.
The youngest sister, Lucy, sat down next to her identical twin, Gerta. She pushed her flyaway elflocks out of her bottomless cerulean eyes. "He's a good man, Gerta!" she admonished her sister. "Didn't he consent to take the two of us into his home when father arranged your marriage?"
"Yes, yes," Gerta conceded with a grumble, "but -"
"But," Lucy agreed, "you're right. Milah, can't marry him because she doesn't love him."
Milah twisted her dark brown tresses up and pinned them in a queenly crown upon her head. Then she turned her countenance from side to side, admiring her lovely reflection. Her shadowy eyes flashed only momentarily away from the vision of herself in the dim mirror, and she laughed cynically at her younger sibling. "Oh, Lucy, you're such a child. Love has nothing to do with marriage. Ask Gerta; she knows." She favored the elder twin with an impish wink. "Old Rump may be nearly thirty and ugly, but he's a superb spinner. With such a high value on his work, he is making a fair sum of money, now."
She held out her hand and showed off the authentic coral ring and matching necklace that her bridegroom had given her. "With me pushing him, his trade will increase. Soon, I'll be selling old Rump's threads and yarn to the nobility. Then we'll make much more wealth," she exclaimed. "Can you imagine what rich and gorgeous fabrics I will be wearing this time next year?"
Gerta's dark blue eyes glittered in avaricious understanding. "And, if you marry him, you'll rise into the merchant class." She enthusiastically hopped from the bed to help her elder sister into the ivory wedding gown. "Milah, do you think he has an acquaintance who needs a wife? I don't want to be trapped with a farmer like father. I want to rise above the peasant class, too, like you."
Smiling at exquisite reflection, Milah twirled before the mirror. "I'm sure I can talk old Rump into finding a suitable husband for you both," she told her younger siblings magnanimously. Suddenly sobered by thoughts of the imminent events to come, she roughly gripped Gerta by the shoulders. "But you must assist me in getting through this wedding. You're right. He is ugly and short, but I can stomach that for a chance at a better life." A sudden wicked grin pulled up the corner of her red lips. "At least until I can do better."
Lucy, the youngest of the three, could stand such talk no longer. She bound from the bed to confront her older sisters. "No!" she shouted insistently. "You're both so wrong, so very, very wrong. True love is vital. Neither money nor status can make you happy."
Gerta flapped a dismissive hand at her twin. "Oh, don't mind her," she said told Milah with a sly grin. "Lucy will come around in time. She's just distressed because she fancies herself in love with old Rump."
Lucy's face flamed a vibrant shade of scarlet, and she pressed her hands to her cheeks. "Oh, Gerta, you promised," she whispered. "You promised not to tell."
"Well, if you wish, Lucy, you can have him when I'm done, sister," Milah said with false sweetness. And, as Lucy fled the room, Milah and Gerta burst into great peals of laughter.
Storybrooke, Maine Granny's Dinner
Attorney Linda Cucurbita was sitting in her usual booth at Granny's. She never simply ate lunch, or any meal really. She only picked at her food while she sorted through various papers. As public defender, she had handled many cases - won some, lost some - but none of them ever bothered her like this one. And she didn't know why.
A local businessman, Mr. Gold, was in jail for the kidnapping and subsequent assault and battery of Moe French. There was no denying the facts of the case. Gold, the pawnbroker, had gotten the better of French, the town florist. In retaliation, French had broken into Gold's home and stolen several valuable items. Gold, then, apparently had kidnapped French and severely beaten him. French was now at Storybrooke General Hospital while Gold sat in the Storybrooke jail.
Reading the facts was depressing. Curcubita snorted. She couldn't decide if the two of them were behaving more like warring gangsters or little boys on the playground in a slugfest. If it were just French, she'd suppose that it was a simple case of the big bully on the playground getting his comeuppance when one of the smaller boys finally stood up to him. However, the other party of Mr. Gold, and he was a very private man of power in town. In fact, she strongly suspected that he owned the town and merely allowed Mayor Mills to pretend to run it for him.
Despite his impressive wealth, no one wanted to take on his case. Not only did everyone fear disappointing the man, but also they could see no way of winning the case. Despite his handicap, Gold had severely beaten French, a much larger man. There was simply no denying the facts, and since no other litigator in town wished to take on a no-win case, it fell to her as the public defender.
No one in town seemed to actually like the man; in fact, most of the citizens of Storybrooke were petrified to death of him. And she wasn't sure why. Yes, he was a ruthless businessman, and, yes, he was hard and unsympathetic. But he had never before actually, physically harmed anyone - for no good reason - that she knew of.
Linda was Storybrooke's public defender, and she was very good at her job. Ordinarily she would have had no trouble handling any case, but she had a disturbing feeling about this case. She sighed because she knew this to be only a partial truth. No, she had to be honest with herself. She didn't simply have odd feelings about the case itself. She was sure that with such circumstantial evidence she could get the charges reduced, earning her client little more than a fine, which would be of little consequence to him. The problem was that she had odd feeling about Mr. Gold. She shuffled more papers around on the table and snorted at her own cowardice. Ok, that was another lie. She didn't have 'odd' feelings about him - just feelings, feelings for him. And those feeling felt like love, TRUE LOVE, which didn't make any sense at all because she had never spent any time with the man. In fact, she had no more than a passing acquaintance with him, not that she wouldn't have liked more.
Every time she saw him in passing, she was plagued during the night with wave upon wave of disturbing dreams. Not nightmares, exactly, they were angst filled visions, and she always, always woke with her heart hammering in her chest, her eyes full of tears. There was something inside her mind, just out of reach, something cryptic about the enigmatic Mr. Gold. But for the life of her, she couldn't decipher it. Sometimes she would concentrate so hard on unraveling this mystery that she gave herself a skull-busting migraine, which left her with a vague impression of her teenage self crushing on the older man. This quasi sort of half-dream, half-memory had been battering her thoughts with more ferocity lately.
And now she was forced to defend him. She only hoped she could defend her heart as well.