Summary: Belle and Gold go on a trip to meet his family. Inspired by Anonymous Nerd Girl, who prompted 'shortbread cookies and a trip to Scotland' and Trekkie, who said 'OMG they HAVE to meet Aunt Elvira'.

Shortbread

"Gold. Gold! Wake up!"

Gold opened one eye and looked sideways at Belle, mumbling something along the lines of 'are we there yet?'

"No. We're at the border and it's your turn to drive."

"Five more minutes." He yawned and shifted in the passenger seat of the little green Ford Fiesta; how on earth he could be comfortable enough to sleep was beyond Belle. She reached over the gear stick and shook his shoulder. Gold batted her hand away.

"All right, all right, I'm awake."

He opened both eyes and looked out of the windscreen at the lay-by they were parked in and the large sign saying 'Welcome to Scotland' that loomed in front of them. Belle sighed as she got out of the driver's side and walked round the front of the car. It was her own fault that she was in this position really. She should have learned by now never to try and bluff Gold, because he'd nearly always call her on it. She patted the bonnet of the Fiesta. It had done well to get them this far. When she'd bought it – a triumphant moment having been saving for it ever since she moved down to Devon – Gold had suggested that she ought to take it on a long run to break it in and get used to it, and he'd offered to come with her.

When Belle had, completely in jest, suggested that they drove to Glasgow to visit his Aunt Elvira, she hadn't expected him to take her up on the idea.

It was a nine hour drive, livened up by the rule that whoever wasn't driving was in charge of the radio. This in itself wasn't overly entertaining; it was more the fact that the radio only seemed to pick up about three stations, so they had a choice of cricket commentary, operas that sounded slightly underwater, or Radio Berkshire – a particularly interesting one since they were currently nearly four hundred miles away from Berkshire. For the most part, the trip had been a good one, but now that they were an awful lot nearer to their destination than they were to home and couldn't turn back, Belle was feeling somewhat apprehensive about the forthcoming meeting.

Gold looked up from adjusting the driver's seat as Belle let out a long sigh.

"Something up, love?"

She turned to him.

"What if she doesn't like me?"

"Who, Aunt Elvira?"

"Who else?"

Gold laughed. "Don't be silly. She's been dying to meet you."

"But what if that's only so that she can rip me to shreds with a single glare?" Belle said . "I've seen you in action in court now. I've seen the way you stare down the opposition. It could make hell freeze over sometimes. What if that look runs in the family?"

"Believe me, it comes down my mother's side, you've nothing to worry about." He gave her a sympathetic look before turning the key in the ignition and pulling out onto the road again. "You're only having second thoughts now that we're actually in Scotland," he said.

"I know, I know."

"Well, we'll be there soon," Gold said cheerfully. "So you don't have long to stew about it."

Belle turned Radio Berkshire up to full volume to distract herself.

X

Elvira Gold had lived in the same area of Glasgow for each of her eighty-three years. She had never married and had no children of her own. She had survived her younger brother and his wife, leaving her with but one living relation – the nephew who was standing on the doorstep of her bungalow with his increasingly nervous girlfriend, listening to the usual cacophony of chaos that preceded Elvira opening the front door.

"Down, Maisie! Down! I said get down!"

This was followed by a volley of high-pitched barking as Maisie, Elvira's toy poodle who served as companion, guard dog and liability in one, attempted to answer the door before her owner. Eventually, she managed to get the dog away from the door and open it.

She was a pretty typical eighty-three year old, if looks were anything to go by, even if she was holding a wooden spoon in one hand and the scruff of a poodle's neck in the other, but it still wasn't enough to mollify Belle yet.

"Ah, the prodigal nephew returns, I see. You know the drill. You can't come in unless you've brought me something to convince me to let you stay."

Gold held out the bottle of gin they'd brought with them and Elvira grinned wickedly.

"Perfect." She reached up on her tiptoes to kiss Gold's cheek. "Welcome back to Scotland, young man. And you must be Belle." She shook Belle's hand and then kissed her as well. "Very pleased to meet you. I thought he was exaggerating when he kept going on about how bonny you were, but he was right."

Belle blushed.

"Come in, come in, out of the cold." Elvira stepped backwards taking Maisie with her, the dog being pulled up short when she tried to jump up and greet the visitors. "Don't mind Maisie, she's just daft. If she had half a brain she'd be dangerous. Oi, Maisie!" she called as the poodle wrestled free of her grip and jumped up at Gold to say hello to her long absent human cousin. "No paw-prints on the Armani!" She shut the door. "Well, I'll show you where you'll be sleeping, and I'm warning you now – the bed squeaks and I'm a light sleeper."

Belle's eyes shifted from Gold, who was staring rather pointedly at the ceiling, to Elvira, who was still doing a pretty passable impression of the Cheshire Cat.

She couldn't quite decide whether she liked Aunt Elvira or was absolutely terrified of her. The next couple of days were going to be extremely interesting.

X

Belle liked to think that everything had been going pretty well until lunchtime the next day. The previous evening had passed pleasantly enough – although perhaps not quite so much for Gold, whose childhood and university indiscretions were the source of most of Elvira's conversation topics. They had very assiduously avoided making the bed squeak, apart from on one occasion in the early hours of the morning when Belle was woken by a canine nose investigating her feet, Maisie having managed to open the bedroom door and come in for a sniff around. Still half asleep and not expecting such an intrusion, Belle had given a muted squeal, whereupon Gold had woken up with a start. Having taken a few moments to assess the situation and groaned something along the lines of 'Jesus Christ, that bloody dog', he got out of bed and dragged the poodle out of the room by the collar, warning her in no uncertain terms that if she tried for a ménage à trois again, she'd be feeling his cane.

("And don't give me that look either," Gold had said when Maisie had given a pathetic whine and looked up at him with a butter-wouldn't-melt expression. "You're the devil in dog form. Now I know why Goethe made Mephistopheles into a poodle for his first entrance.")

Aunt Elvira, it turned out, had lied about being a light sleeper, because she had heard none of this early morning exchange when it was explained to her over breakfast.

So yes, things were on a pretty even keel as far as Belle could tell, until Elvira came through from the kitchen where she was making lunch and told Gold that she had run out of wine.

"Right…" Gold replied. "And what precisely do you expect me to do about it?"

Elvira rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips.

"I expect you to go to the off-licence and get some more!"

"Can't I plead being an invalid?" Gold moaned, waving his cane at her.

"No," Elvira said plainly. "I'm cooking and Belle's a guest, so it's your job."

"If Belle's a guest, what on earth am I?"

"You're my nephew."

Gold sighed – apparently he'd long since learned that arguing with his aunt was a fruitless pursuit – and got up. Belle offered to come with him, but Elvira called her back.

"Actually, Belle, I thought you and I could have a bit of a girly chat."

Gold raised an eyebrow. "So you don't actually need me to go to the off-licence, you just want me out of the way so that you can terrorise my girlfriend."

Elvira placed her hand on her heart with a mock-offended expression.

"Would I do such a thing?"

"Yes," Gold replied gruffly. He turned to Belle. "The shop's only at the end of the road, I'll be fifteen minutes at the most."

"I'll be fine," Belle said brightly, despite the fact she was suddenly not looking forward to being left alone with Aunt Elvira.

"Just set Maisie on her if she scares you too much."

Belle looked down at Maisie, who was chasing her tail round in increasingly small circles. The thought didn't fill her with much confidence.

Elvira sat down in Gold's vacated seat on the sofa beside Belle.

"Now, I know what you're thinking," the older woman began. "You're thinking 'oh dear lord, she's about to threaten me with an egg whisk if I break his heart'. And you're quite right. I am. He's the happiest I've seen him since he lost Bae, and if you hurt him I will come after you and kill you with a spoon." She paused and her fierce expression gradually melted into a smile. "So that's the scary bit over."

"Right…" Belle looked at Elvira, who in spite of her age and frailty did seem perfectly capable of murdering her with a spoon. "Erm… I'm not quite sure what I should say to that. Fair enough, I suppose."

Elvira patted her arm.

"He's my only blood relation, and I'm his. We live at opposite ends of the British Isles and see each other twice a year if we're lucky. I'm a bit protective." She grinned. "But I don't think you'll break his heart, far from it. You two work well together, I can tell. There's something there that wasn't there before, not with any other woman." She paused. "It's a shame you couldn't meet his mother. She would have loved you; you'd have got on very well together. She was nowhere near as scary as I am. Nowhere near the usual Mother-In-Law from Hell."

"I don't know much about her really," Belle admitted. "He doesn't talk about his family much. Apart from you."

"Whatever outrageous tales he's told you about me, I can assure you that they are all completely and utterly true. And aye, well, he has his reasons. There's nothing traumatic, don't worry about that. But he and his dad were never close and that only worsened when the wayward son decided to move about as far away from Scotland as possible. His ma was lovely, though, and it's a shame he didn't take more after her in temperament. I know you're not supposed to like your in-laws, but Miriam didn't have an unkind bone in her body. And like I said, she would have loved you. You remind me a bit of her, actually."

Belle gave a small sigh, not really hearing Elvira's next words as she made her excuses and returned to the kitchen. Gold had told her before that his mother would have loved her, and she'd never really taken him seriously. But now Elvira had also said it...

She did not know much about Gold's family, but having now met its only surviving branch, Belle was beginning to believe that maybe she could become a proper part of it.

X

"She's even lovelier than you had me believe."

Elvira's eyes flickered from her shortbread mix towards Belle, who was playing with Maisie in the conservatory whilst her owner baked in the kitchen, Gold hovering in the doorway between the two. Having ascertained on his return from the off-licence that morning that Belle had not been completely traumatised by her chat with Elvira, he had determined to keep a watchful eye on his aunt for the rest of their stay. He glanced over his shoulder at Belle before turning back to his aunt, who was looking at him in an almost accusatory manner, her arms crossed over her chest in a classic no-nonsense pose.

"She's a keeper. I've already warned her that I'll have her heart with a teaspoon if she hurts you, and now I'll warn you that I'll have your balls with my cuticle scissors if you break her heart." Elvira raised an eyebrow with a wicked little smile. "So when are you going to make an honest woman of her, then?"

"Aunt Elvira, please…"

"You are not getting any younger, sir." She tapped his shoulder with her measuring spoon. "If you don't snap her up soon, someone else will. She's bright, she's beautiful, and she makes you stupidly happy. What more do you need?"

"Nothing, I just… I'm just waiting for the right moment."

Elvira grinned.

"So you are planning on popping the question, then?"

"When the time comes. Baby steps, Aunt Elvira. We aren't even living together yet."

"Aye, and if you don't get a move on I'll come down there with a removal van myself." She paused and gave him a look that could almost be described as sympathetic if it wasn't quite so excited at the prospect of a forthcoming wedding and the opportunity to buy a new hat. "Well, when you do feel that the time is right, you know where I keep the Gold family stone."

"I can't propose to Belle with the family stone!" Gold hissed.

"Why not?"

"Because I proposed to Liz with it! You can't propose to two different women with the same ring, even if it is a family heirloom."

Elvira smiled, and this time it was truly sympathetic.

"Your ma thought you might say that."

Gold watched as Elvira reached down the back of the saucepan cupboard to where she kept all her little valuables and pulled out a small velvet pouch.

"You know Miriam left me her jewellery when she died."

Gold nodded. It was the only thing that she hadn't left to him, and he hadn't contested it. After his father's death, his mother and Elvira had become as close as blood sisters.

"Well, before she died, she took me on one side and told me something. 'I know he'll find the one, even if he doesn't believe me' she said – she was talking about you. 'I know he'll find the one, and I know she'll be the one because she'll wear my ring. Keep it safe for her, Vi.'" Elvira slipped her hand into the little bag and pulled out a ring familiar to Gold that had once adorned his mother's hands. "I'd never met anyone with fingers as slim as your ma's till I met Belle. I couldn't believe it when I shook hands with her, it was like holding Miriam's hands again. I even nicked one of her own rings this morning to measure against it."

Gold raised an eyebrow. "And they wonder where I get my magpie tendencies from."

Elvira ignored him.

"Exactly the same size," she continued. "Just as your ma predicted. She always had a touch of magic about her, Miriam Gold." She took Gold's hand and pressed the ring into it. "So when the time's right, you can give her your ma's ring, with her blessing and mine."

Gold looked back at Belle over his shoulder, following the movement of her hands as she patted Maisie and got her to jump for treats, imagining the ring he now held set against her beautiful fingers. He curled his own fingers over it in his palm.

One day, when the time was right, Belle would wear his mother's ring.