The Enchanted Forest, about four months previous

Rumpelstiltskin would never admit to his little infatuation if Belle asked – he'd rather cut off one of his own hands than admit to any tender feelings for her. After all, he was the Dark One. He was the monster mothers warned their children of – the Spinner. He dealt for infants for goodness sake. He was scary, dammit! She should be frightened, but instead the new maid insisted on being companionable. He should have seen this coming, shouldn't have given her the pillow when she cried. It had been a slippery slope and he'd stumbled down it head first.

After he gave her the pillow, he had taken her hunting for the thief and on returning he had instructed her to clean the library. He'd always meant to add a library to the castle, that was nothing special. But she had looked at him like...that. Well, he'd not been able to help himself after. If had Belle found anything strange about the warm new blanket that was on her pallet when she returned to her room that night, she had been smart enough not to say anything to him about it.

She was warming to him, which was dangerous. It probably had something to do with the new four-poster bed and vanity that had recently appeared in her room as though by accident. Or the wardrobe full of clothes (she seemed to prefer the blue dress, as it was the easiest to work in, but he didn't see why she shouldn't have the option of one of the various ballgowns in case of a surprise ball). Or perhaps it was the window that somehow looked out over the lake even though the nearest lake was a good twenty miles away and her room was below ground. It could, he conceded, also be the fact that the room now sported vaulted ceilings and walls coated in tapestries along with a carpet so plush that he'd not slept in a bed that soft until after he'd moved into the Dark Castle.

Oh gods, he was hopeless. There were princesses who didn't sleep in as much luxury as his maid did. He'd actually be surprised if she'd had half so many nice things when she had been home as she did here. He didn't mean to acquire her so many fripperies, but sometimes deals had to be made for what was at hand and if what was at hand happened to be something that reminded him of Belle or that he had no use for then well, it was silly to not let her have it.

Scarier still, there were moments when he thought she might understand his feelings and maybe even reciprocate. Those were the worst days, because they were false hope. He'd thought about this longer than he cared to admit even to himself, but there was no rational way that Belle could feel the same way he did. He was evil, he was a ruined soul, he was ugly and twisted by a blackness she could not possibly comprehend. He was ancient and terrible and she was...Belle. She was kindness and light and music fluttering from room to room barely even bothering to dust and doing a terrible job when she did, truly.

If he wasn't so cowardly, so selfish, he'd send her home now with a dowry and a story of how her innocence and stalwart good cheer had melted the darkest heart in the land reforming his wicked ways and setting him on a path to righteousness. He could, he realized, do that. It wasn't terribly far from the truth anyway, and really he only had a few more deals to make to achieve his end goal. Only one of them (which had already been set in motion anyway) required him doing something truly evil. He could make her the heroine of the tale and spirit her away to a life of contentment with a husband and love and a family to call her own.

But Rumpelstiltskin had always been a coward, and loss had made him selfish. He would clutch her close to him and guard her like a dragon keeps its hoard, the secret bright spot in his life. As long as she could never truly love him back, they were both safe.

He would just have to try to be extra terrifying from now on.

Storybrook, 1983

Gold knew he should probably be angry with Lacey French, but he just wasn't. For one thing, she'd had a point – he had been staring. But there was more to it than that now, now she was interesting.

He'd obviously been interested in her before, granted. She was a pretty girl with a nice enough body and he was only a man and he was bound to look (he may have crossed the line into ogling), but mostly he'd been curious. She was new and he wasn't used to meeting new people. She'd not flinched away from him at her father's shop even as she'd been obviously uncomfortable asking for the money, and she'd accepted Mrs. Lucas' scorn with nary a word spoken in her own defense. She'd poured a glass of water on him for staring at her, but she had also clearly dressed to attract male attention. Miss Lacey French was a mystery and it had been too long since he'd had one of those.

Still, he'd have to tread more carefully around her lest she start tossing other things in his lap the next time she saw him. Water was easy enough to deal with (although it had been a pain going home and changing suits), but were she to graduate into condiments and sauces he might find himself wishing he'd kept his interest more subtle.

Oh hell, and the new maid started tomorrow. Apparently, Ashley Boyd found cleaning private houses too difficult in her current condition – what she really meant, of course, was that she found it uncomfortable to be around the man who had arranged for her to sell her baby – and as a result she had to cut back. Gold liked to be around when a new maid started, just to make sure they knew their job and didn't plan on stealing from him. It wasn't hard work (he lived alone, after all), but he expected it to be done correctly and professionally. He'd just have to arrange to do some work from home tomorrow afternoon.

The next day found Mr. Gold in a worse mood than before. He was always a little testy after rent day (the walking tended to exacerbate the problems with his ankle), and this morning also found the mayor storming into his shop on a tear about something or another. That woman was absolutely unhinged, and frankly she'd be lucky if she survived the year without ending up in the secret psych ward under the hospital she thought no one knew about.

Regina had managed to slow down his progress sufficiently that he wasn't ready to leave before lunch, meaning he wouldn't be there to meet the new maid when she arrived. He was a creature of habit, and he disliked having his habits upended by anything, but a woman shrieking nonsense and expecting him to remember it was well and truly not the way he had hoped for his morning to go.

By the time he finally parked his Cadillac in front of his salmon colored Victorian home outside of town, he was fairly certain this maid was going to run out crying before the day was out in which case he'd have to start the whole damned process over again with a new girl. Regina could consider her welcome officially worn out if this happened again.

He let himself in through the front door and, not seeing anyone on the ground floor, made his way upstairs. It was in the upstairs study that he finally located the woman in question. She was small in stature, but oddly familiar looking standing on a step ladder and dusting his tchotchkes. Her back was towards him, and she was dancing a little to music blasting through a pair of headphones connected to a tape deck attached to her uniform. Gold had the briefest sensation of deja vu watching her, which was the only reason he could give for why he stood there like a statue watching her work far longer than what would have been comfortable for either of them.

She finally set the last item down on the shelf and glanced behind her in preparation to descend the ladder. When she saw him, though, she yelped in surprise and he could see the moment she lost her balance. Everything seemed to work in slow motion as he lunged forward just in time to catch Lacey French in his arms before she came crashing to the floor. Well, he amended to himself, catch might be too strong a word. She stumbled into him and he was there to prevent her stumbling onto the floor. Still, though, he mentally congratulated himself on his quick reflexes even as his ankle quietly reminded him he wasn't 30 anymore.

"Jesus, Gold," Lacey exclaimed, her headphones now around her neck and the sounds of a man doing what could be generously called 'singing' reached his ears. "Am I going to have to get a restraining order to get you to stop staring at me?"

"You're in my house, dearie," he reminded her, his hackles instantly raised by her statement. "And I believe a 'thank you' is traditional when someone saves your fool neck because you're stupid enough to be standing on a ladder listening to whatever the hell that is in a stranger's house."

"It's Billy Idol," she looked at him as though he were the one with something to apologize for. "And I guess I'm to assume you're my Tuesday afternoon bachelor. Fucking fantastic, of course I get the creepy guy."

"It's my house," he reminded her testily. "I can do whatever I damn well please here."

"Yeah, well see how far that gets you," she fumed as she grabbed her ladder and moved it over to the next shelf along the wall.

"What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" she snapped. "I'm finishing my job."

"You're not leaving?"

"Look," she hissed, spinning to face him once again. "I need this job. Unlike you, some of us have to work for a living and this is all I'm qualified for. So unless you'd like to wait for the agency to find someone else desperate enough to clean your house – and I'm going to assume it will be a long wait – you can just shut up and let me finish. Or watch, if that's what you're into."

She wasn't scared of him, he realized belatedly as she put her headphones back on and ascended the ladder to begin working on the next shelf in line. She legitimately was not afraid of him or his reputation. He couldn't even begin to understand how to handle that. She should be afraid of him. He was bigger than her, he was stronger than her, he could buy whatever hole in the wall building she lived in and sell it out from under her, he could have her fired, he could do any number of things to ruin her life and she simply refused to be afraid of him.

He stood there dumbstruck for awhile, staring at her back as she picked up each item in turn, cleaned it, and set it back down. He couldn't remember the last time someone wasn't afraid of him.

Finally, more out of a sense of self-preservation than anything else (she had a number of cleaning products containing bleach available to her, after all) he finally managed to tear himself away and move to the desk. He had planned to do work, after all, while she was here.

If he spent more time staring at Lacey than he did at the contracts he was working on, well, she didn't seem to notice (or at least she pretended not to). And if he found himself in need of a snack by the time she made her way into the kitchen, she pretended not to notice him there as well.

Maybe he could get used to her working here, he finally conceded. She was interesting, and at least in the privacy of his home she seemed willing to let him indulge his curiosity. Surely that was all it was, an idle curiosity about a woman who didn't behave like he would have expected her to, and definitely not anything deeper or more dangerous than that.

By the time she had finished for the day and was preparing to leave, Lacey seemed to have gotten over her initial distaste of him. She even sought him out to tell him she was about to go.

"Thank you, Miss French," he said, rising from his seat and moving to walk her to the door. "I suppose you'll be back next week?"

"I had planned on it," she said cautiously, half asking him if he wanted her to return after she had yelled at him.

"Well, you've done an excellent job," he conceded.

And it was true, the place had been filthy and Lacey had far exceeded her expectations.

"That's good," she said with a shrug. "I suppose odds were I had to have one skill outside of hustling pool."

He half wanted to ask the story behind that statement, that little bit of self-deprecation she had used, but to do so would be to invite an intimacy with her and he was suddenly wary.

"Oh and by the way," he said as he opened the door for her, she looked a bit confused at his gesture before stepping through it. "I'll not be calling for a replacement for next week."

She smiled at that, not one of her angry smiles or one calculated to get a reaction from him. In fact, he doubted she realized she'd done it – she was simply glad to be allowed to come back and clean again. She must really be desperate for the money.

He pulled out his wallet, then, and removed a twenty-dollar bill. The look of shock on her face only grew as he handed it to her. She stared down at the cash in her hand for a little while, seemingly trying to determine the proper response to a tip that large, and a little imp in the back of his head insisted he not leave it at that and risk her thinking he liked her.

"So you can buy a longer skirt," he said, the edge to his voice hiding how much he regretted the words even as he said them.

Still, he couldn't take them back now and the look of outrage on her face as he shut the door satisfied whatever evil urge had summoned them in the first place.

He heard her outraged shriek from his position just inside, and she banged on the door a few times but he couldn't bring himself to answer and face her wrath.

He'd half expected the money to be shoved through the mail slot at him, but when he opened the door after she left, both Lacey and the $20 had gone. He was glad for that, though, because she would probably put the money to better use than he would and honestly he'd wanted her to have it. She probably deserved some sort of hazard pay for putting up with him.