Summary: Ruby's reaction to Belle's engagement. Several reviewers wanted this one. Again, it's a little shorter, but I hope it sates your appetites nonetheless.

Note: Dedicated to a lovely colleague of mine, whose Scottish father really wants her to get married so he's got an excuse to wear his kilt again… She is also the one who told me the 'slightly scandalised receptionist' tale that Ruby relates here. It's a true story!

Rock Cake

"Well, hello stranger," Ruby said as Belle stepped up to the counter and ordered a cup of tea to take away. "We haven't seen you in here for a while."

"Ruby, you saw me on Saturday at Emma's wedding and I was here in the café last Monday. That's seven days since I was last in here."

"Well, yes, but... I'm used to seeing you in here every day!" Ruby moaned.

"Despite the fact that I've been working at the library for over two months now," Belle said drily.

"Some things are harder to get used to than others," Ruby countered. She poured some hot water into a cardboard cup and added milk, pressing a takeaway lid on, Belle merely looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm not paying for my tea unless it's actually got tea in it," she said plainly. Ruby prised the lid off and realised her mistake, dropping a teabag into the hot white liquid. Belle reached out to take the cup again, but as she did so, something flashed in the light and Ruby held the cup out of her reach, staring down at Belle's left hand.

"Ruby?" Belle's voice was concerned. "Is something wrong?"

"Is something wrong?" Ruby exploded. "Is something wrong, she asks, blithely coming in here with a rock on her finger the size of I don't know what!" She grabbed Belle's hand and held it up in front of her face, pointing out the ring that had most definitely not been there the last time they had met. "When did this happen?"

"I was going to tell you," Belle said, amused by Ruby's reaction – something Ruby herself didn't find at all amusing. "Given your abstraction with teabags this morning, however, I wasn't sure you'd fully appreciate the news."

"Appreciate it! You're engaged, woman! I want to know everything!"

"Ruby, I've got to go to work."

"Well, you'll just have to tell me everything quickly then, won't you?"

Belle gave her friend a succinct and speedy account of the proposal and promised to go into as much detail as Ruby wanted later, after work.

Ruby waited until Belle had left the café in the direction of the library before dancing a little jig on the spot. August had come in during this expression of joy and stood in the doorway for several seconds just staring at his colleague.

"May I ask why you're dancing like a lunatic?" he asked eventually.

"Erm…" Ruby thought for a moment. Whilst Belle hadn't specifically asked her to keep the details of her newly-affianced status a secret, she wasn't sure her friend wanted everyone told; it was her news to spread after all. "No," she said finally, after much deliberation. "You'll find out soon enough."

Thankfully, August seemed to accept this and didn't press any further. Still, Ruby thought it might be a good idea to calm down.

Working in the café and having worked in catering and hospitality her entire life, Ruby had been a witness to many snapshots of many different romances. She had seen shy first glances, awkward first dates, tentative first kisses. She had seen proposals, she had seen wedding receptions, she had seen the aftermath of hotel rooms on wedding nights. She had seen fallouts, breakups, the beginnings of divorces. She had seen so many relationships in so many various stages, but she felt a certain sort of protectiveness towards Belle and Gold, as she had seen their love unfold from its very beginning, a year ago now, when Gold had first come to work over the way and Belle had dropped a fork after exchanging a smile with him through the window. She had seen them past their rocky beginnings and watched them go from strength to strength, and now, she felt almost as if her patience had been rewarded with their engagement. Romance was part of her every day life and she saw it so often that she thought that she might have become too used to it to care; she was glad to find that this was not so.

She grinned again, unable to help it, and looked down to find that she had absent-mindedly started doodling on the order pad. A cake, naturally, Ruby was good at imagining cakes thanks to Granny's expertise. Square, four tiers, white with yellow roses. Or maybe pink. It depended on what colour Belle wanted her bridesmaids to be.

"Ruby… What are you drawing… Is that a wedding cake?"

Ruby quickly tore the top sheet off the pad and stuck it in the pocket of her apron.

"Nope!" she said, overly brightly. August merely raised an eyebrow in response, completely disbelieving.

"Ruby, I know you're trying to keep the fact that Belle's engaged a secret, but you're really not doing a very good job of it."

Ruby opened her mouth to protest and closed it again before she ended up doing an impression of a gaping fish.

"How did you know?" she asked indignantly.

"Well, someone's getting married, and I think you'd make very sure I knew if it was you. Besides, I saw the ring on her finger this morning."

Ruby's eyes narrowed. "Hmm. All right. Yes. Belle's getting married. But don't tell a soul."

"I won't."

"I'll get Granny to take a crossbow to you."

"I won't tell anyone! I swear!"

August threw up his hands in defence against the non-existent crossbow, and Ruby smiled to herself. That tactic never failed.

The end of the day seemed to take an age to come round, but finally, Belle appeared in the café once more and Ruby could confirm that the events of the morning had been neither dream or hallucination and yes, Belle really was getting married and Ruby's celebratory dancing had not been in vain.

"So…" Ruby began once Belle had finished the full, unabridged tale of the proposal. She was dying to ask a question that had been burning at the back of her mind ever since she had first learned of Belle's engagement that morning. "You're marrying a Scotsman."

"Yes…" Belle's eyes narrowed. "Ruby, where are you going with this?"

Ruby grinned.

"Is he going to wear a kilt to the wedding?"

Belle gave her friend a pointed look.

"Ruby, the question you are actually trying to ask is 'is he going to wear anything underneath the kilt?' isn't it?"

"That was going to be my next question," Ruby admitted. "But it's no use asking that if he's not going to be wearing a kilt in the first place." She paused. "Does he even own a kilt?"

Belle nodded. "It's hanging up in a suit carrier at the back of the wardrobe gathering dust. I've seen it. Never seen him inside it though, before you ask."

"What, the suit carrier?" Ruby grinned.

"No, the kilt."

"Not even in pictures?" Ruby was disappointed.

"Ruby, I think the last time he wore it was his dad's funeral. That's coming up for twenty years ago. It probably doesn't fit anymore, and he had the accident since then…" Belle began.

"You still haven't answered the question," Ruby pointed out.

"And I'm not going to. I don't want you scaring him off just after he's asked me to marry him," Belle said, raising an eyebrow.

"Belle!" Ruby exclaimed in mock-offence. "Honestly, you make me sound like some kind of predator!"

"When it comes to men wearing kilts, you are," Belle said drily. "I remember your tales from when you worked at the Royal Clarence."

"Ah yes…" Ruby remembered one particular incident from her tenure as a waitress at the hotel with fondness. She'd been working a Scottish wedding and all the groomsmen – kilt-clad and wearing them like true Scotsmen – had casually started mooning the receptionist. "She was slightly scandalised, but she was young. She got over it quickly."

"I was going to ask what you were talking about, but I've suddenly decided that I don't want to know."

Ruby looked over at the door to see Gold standing there with raised eyebrows. She tilted her head on one side and gave him the once over, trying to imagine him in a kilt.

It didn't work. Especially when, considering she'd known him for practically a year, she could count the number of times she'd seen Gold in anything less than a full suit on one hand.

Gold took a step back towards the safety of the pavement outside under the weight of her scrutiny, and Belle rolled her eyes before going over and hooking her arm through her fiancé's, acting as a sort of human shield from Ruby's imagination.

She would have to wait and see, but Ruby didn't mind. Kilts were unimportant in the grander scheme of things, after all, when your best friend had found true love and happiness.