Note: Part two of today's update.

Summary: So many readers asked for this cupcake, so here it is: the one you've all been waiting for.

Wedding Cake – First Tier

Part Two

The evening was definitely drawing to a close. The newly-weds had been safely waved off on their honeymoon and people were beginning to drift away from the hotel in dribs and drabs, only the die-hard core of drinkers remaining in the bar and getting increasingly rowdy. Belle stayed standing in the driveway waving long after the taillights of the taxi had disappeared onto the main road. The function room had been becoming unbearably warm and stuffy, and Belle was glad of the breeze preventing what could have been the beginnings of a headache. One of Graham's many cousins – the man had a seemingly interminable supply of them, a true wolf pack – had caught Emma's bouquet, and, as promised, Graham had flung the garter at Archie, much to Ruby's consternation. Granny had surpassed herself with the cake, which although not a three-tiered meringue-iced masterpiece, was never the less intricately decorated with tiny handmade sugar decorations in all sorts of shapes that reflected Emma and Graham's lives, and topped not with the traditional bride and groom, but with a white swan and wolf.

All in all, it had been a wonderful day, and Belle's heart was swollen with joy. She was also, although she'd never admit it, feeling a pang of yearning for her own wedding. She had never had the chance for a proper wedding; Emma and Graham's modest celebration was a far cry from the lavish ceremonies that she'd dreamed of when she was younger, but it was still a celebration, an event to be remembered, not a simple legal binding performed for necessity rather than any real desire.

Gold put an arm around Belle's shoulders to pull her into his side.

"Shall we go for a wander?" he asked. "Make sure we're well away when the drunken karaoke starts."

Belle nodded her assent and slipped her arm through his, letting him lead them through the gardens away from the drive. She sighed happily and leaned into Gold's side. "It was a lovely day. I'm glad everything went according to plan. I'm not quite sure inviting the vicar back to partake of the reception was quite the right idea though. I think the best man's speech may have shocked him a bit."

"Well, they weren't to know," said Gold. "Actually, Graham should probably have known. Ah well, I'm sure he's heard worse in his time." Belle looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

"Well, ok, maybe not. We should probably be grateful that Archie was on hand to cover Henry's ears in some places."

Graham's cousin's speech had been… interesting, would probably be the best way of describing it. It had certainly left poor Graham doing a passable impression of a tomato. Whilst said cousin's wife had done an admirable job of censoring it, there had still been more than enough innuendo to raise a few eyebrows, most of the jokes coming from the fact Graham was a policeman and had been known to fell dangerous criminals with his truncheon. Mind you, Ruby had done much the same for Emma in her own speech. In the absence of a father-of-the-bride to give the traditional speech to embarrass the newly-wed wife just as the best man ribbed the groom, Ruby had been elected to do the honours instead. Belle giggled again at the memory and nearly toppled over on her spindly heels. Gold caught her.

"You want to be careful, my darling, as people will begin to think you've had too much champagne."

"Well, we're celebrating," Belle said, her voice as placid as if she was stating the weather. "It's a wedding, after all."

"We could be celebrating something else, as well," Gold said softly. Belle looked up at him.

"What?"

"Oh, not yet, not yet. I'll tell you later." There was the faintest smirk playing on his lips, and Belle got the distinct impression that he was planning something. She looked around at their surroundings, still headed further and further away from the hotel.

"Do you actually have a destination in mind?" she asked playfully. "If I didn't know you were a gentleman, Mr Gold, I'd be rather inclined to think you were intending to ravish me behind the rose bushes."

With impeccable timing, there was a very human sounding squeal and giggle from the nearest clump of greenery, and the two wanderers picked up their pace a little to move past. Belle wasn't sure, but she thought that the voice had belonged to Astrid.

"Much as that sounds like an excellent idea, Miss French, I think such a course of action may be frowned upon by the proprietors of the establishment. We'll leave the ravishing till we're at home, eh? But I'm sure we could do it behind the rose bushes there if you wanted."

"Your rosebushes leave a little to be desired, though," Belle pointed out. "They need nurturing. We wouldn't get much coverage."

"Hmm… Put your posy in a vase on the mantelpiece and use artistic license?" Gold suggested.

Belle looked down at the posy of dark red roses in her free hand that she'd been carrying for most of the day. "It'll do."

They were nearing the end of the path now, and Belle was beginning to wonder quite what Gold was planning.

"Seriously, Gold, where are we going?" she asked.

"Right there." He nodded towards the end of the path. Belle squinted through the dim evening light to see a little wishing well tucked in amongst the trees. She looked at him and narrowed her eyes.

"What are you planning?" she asked. Her heart skipped a little, not wanting to give voice to the thought in case her hope was unfounded and she was disappointed.

"I have no idea," Gold confessed. Belle could tell he was nervous behind the easy demeanour he'd fallen into over the last few minutes. "I just saw this place earlier on, and thought, 'why not, it's as good a place as any…' Oh dear, I haven't thought this through."

Belle tried to squash her grin, but it didn't work.

"Come on," she said and slipped her arm out of his so that she could take his hand in hers and pull him towards the well. She tripped up the little flight of steps to peer into the well, slightly disappointed to find it covered in mesh for health and safety reasons. Probably to keep the drunkards from the many weddings that the hotel hosted from falling in, she supposed, but still. She turned back to Gold, who'd stayed at the bottom of the steps, watching her with an expression that was, simply put, pure love.

"So," Belle began, before the silence could become all-encompassing. "We're here now."

Gold took Belle's left hand in his and kissed her knuckles.

"I've been waiting for the right moment for months," he said. "And even now, I'm not sure if it's the right moment, what with it still technically being someone else's wedding. But it's also our nine-month anniversary, and we're in a place that looks like something out of a fairytale, and, well, there's no time like the present." He looked up at her from the bottom of the steps, slightly sheepish. "This is about as near to down on one knee as you're going to get from me."

Belle felt her breath catch as Gold leaned his cane carefully against the well to have both hands free, feeling in his inside jacket pocket to pull out a little velvet bag not at all unlike the ones she kept her jewellery in. He reached inside and produced something small, silver and sparkling.

"Belle, you're the most wonderful person I've met, I love you more than I can ever express, and if you agree to be my wife, you'll make me the happiest man alive." He took a deep breath. "Belle French, will you marry me?"

She'd suspected that this might have been what he'd been building up to, but she hadn't dared to hope. She rushed down the steps and threw her arms around Gold, pulling him into a long, languorous kiss.

"So, that's a yes, then?" Gold asked faintly as she finally let him up for air.

"Yes. Oh, yes!"

Belle released her grip on his shoulders to bring her left hand up between them so that Gold could slip the ring onto her finger.

"Perfect fit," she said, peering closely at the ring. It was in the shape of a pair of hands holding a heart -shaped diamond, and Belle was sure she'd seen it somewhere before.

"It was my ma's," Gold said quietly, kissing her fingertips. "She had tiny wee hands, like yours. She wanted you to have it. You can pick out another if you don't like it."

"It's beautiful," Belle breathed, and since words seemed to her to be completely overrated at that moment in time, she settled instead for kissing Gold instead.

She was in love. She was engaged. She was going to marry this wonderful man and spend the rest of her life with him.

Belle's heart, already so full of love and joy from the celebratory day, decided that skipping was overrated, detoured past the triple loop-the-loop, and soared...

Belle's ring is a variation on an Irish claddagh, if you wanted to google it and see what it looks like.

I know these two chapters are slightly uneven in length, but I wanted to keep them separate. In my cake'verse timeline, I have always had Gold proposing after Emma's wedding, but I didn't want the proposal to detract from the wedding itself, so I split the chapter in two. I hope you enjoyed nonetheless.