It's several months before the next child arrives – long enough that she's almost forgotten the ache the first child stirred in her breast. She reads a book in a chair by the fireplace, the soft creak of his spinning wheel soothing her spirits. This domestic scene has become their routine – he spins, she reads, and they while away the remains of the day in gentle, quiet companionship. She treasures this easy time spent together – when they converse, there are always stops and starts, missteps and stumbles. But in the silence they speak volumes to each other, and mutual understanding settles around them like a warm cloak.

She becomes aware that the room has grown quieter, the sounds of his spinning dying away. She looks over her shoulder to see him rising. "It's nearly time, Dearie," he tells her. She raises a questioning eyebrow at him. Before he vanishes in a puff of purple smoke he reassures her "I'll be back before you have time to miss me." He means it as a joke, she thinks, but perhaps he knows. She does miss him when he's gone.

He's not gone very long, this time. He materializes between her and the fireplace, his shadow falling over her reading. He holds a swaddled babe out to her; it takes her a moment to accept the impossibly new child. She doesn't look up at him, because she knows there is begging in her eyes. Please. Let this one stay. But take the child she does. Belle is brave enough to walk towards heartbreak with her eyes open. He turns to go, but her voice stills him at the doorway "Will you join me by the fire, and speak with me, Rumplestiltskin?"

He turns his gaze back upon her and the child tucked to her breast, and she would almost swear she sees tenderness in his strange amber eyes. "If you wish it," he answers as he sinks into the chair beside her. He is close enough to reach out and touch her, but he does not. He is not forward with his maid, though he wishes to be. He has grown desperately fond of her and he will not allow his desire to tarnish the gentle peace that has blossomed between them. It is thick, and strong and it keeps him up at night, but he is no mere love-sick boy. He keeps it under control in her presence.

He speaks in a hushed voice, so as not to disturb the slumbering newborn, "What's on your mind, Dearie?"

"Where did you acquire the child? He seems very young."

"Indeed. Born less than an hour ago. He's royal, too. Just like you, Belle."

"Was he...," She remembers his sad, troubled eyes when he'd given her the first child "Unwanted?"

He pauses for a few moments, but he finds his voice "His mother felt they'd both be better off apart. She is a princess, destined for marriage to a sultan in Agrabah. But she got into trouble with one of her tutors. She was clever though, called me nearly eight months ago. I've kept her under a glamour – her parents, the court, all blissfully unaware of her condition. She called me when the pangs became rapid. I delivered her of the child, and brought him home to you." He pulls a sapphire the size of an egg from his pocket and tosses it between his hands, smiling as the blue filtered light dances off her face. "Payment. Offered in exchange for the glamour, and a loving home for her unsanctioned get."

Belle looks up at him, softly stroking the child's back. "You can conjure gems that lovely, and lovelier."

H stiffens slightly – they're at one of those uncomfortable impasses where he finds himself too unmasked in her presence. More and more, he tries to be brave, if only with her. "It would be foolish to let word get out that I have a soft spot for innocent babes, don't you think, Dearie? The Dark One should steal babes, not rescue them if he wishes to maintain his fearful reputation. And anyway, she didn't need it. She'll be ludicrously wealthy when she weds her sultan."

She knows it makes him uncomfortable to be so forthright with her, so she returns the favor, "I can't imagine giving up my child. How can she bear it?"

Another nerve, struck, and he struggles not to revert to anger and outburst. It is so much easier to take refuge in anger than to give in to sorrow and regret. "She wanted to keep him safe. At best, her family would have cast her out. It's entirely possible they might have slain the babe, and his father, too. She did not wish so much blood on her hands."

"It was a self-less act, then?"

"Aye. Her paramour will live, her son will be loved and cared for, and she will do her duty for her kingdom."

"That's so sad."

He sighs, and she feels she has somehow said the wrong thing. "Do you feel kinship with her, Dearie? Sold off to strange man she does not know? Herself, and her happiness the only thing she has to sacrifice in defense of her homeland?" He tries to keep the bitterness in his tone at bay, but it seeps through. She looks up at him strangely. "If I have sacrificed anything, Rumplestiltskin, it is very small in comparison. She has sacrificed love and a child. I had neither of those things before I came to you."

He studiously avoids thinking about the layers of meaning in her words, though it is difficult with those blue eyes staring up at him, so wide and guileless. He looks and looks, and does not break her gaze, even as he knows he has stared at her for longer than is polite. She turns her attention to the child, and breaths in the purity of its scent. "I hope the sultan is kind to her," she tells him. "Perhaps, in time, she will come to love him."

She catches a bright purple flash at the corner of her eye as he magics himself away, but she knows he has heard her.