Rumplestiltskin hadn't spied on Gaston and Belle. He knew Belle would be angry with him if she found out he'd been eavesdropping, just as he knew how frail and tenuous Belle's ability to trust was—not just him but anyone. They had a saying in the Frontlands, Don't break what you know you can't mend. Belle, he thought, hovered so close to that line. He was terrified of pushing her over.

But, knowing that might not have been enough to keep him in line. What forced him to stay near the house, an alert servant standing by for any commands he might be given, was knowing how easily Gaston might push him over the edge. If eavesdropping could crush the small bit of trust Belle had, murdering her guest in front of her eyes could destroy her—or destroy any hope he had of rebuilding . . . something between them.

So, he wasn't spying on them. And he wasn't thinking about where to put Gaston, whether as a rose bush or a snail or an ornamental fish. Not an apple tree, pleasant as it might be to play bobbing for Gaston. A certain queen had given him a distaste for those. Although, it might be amusing to plant Gaston at Regina's old castle. Downright fitting, if you thought about it.

Not spying didn't mean he couldn't watch them as they walked around the gardens, however. He was playing a faithful servant, after all; and a faithful servant stood ready to serve. It was his job to keep an eye on the lady of the house and be ready to hop to it if she so much as lifted a finger in his direction—especially if she decided a certain guest had overstayed his welcome.

But, when they'd gone out of sight by the cherry trees, it had been all he could do not to watch what was happening, magically or otherwise. He also had to remind himself that he'd been planting various spells of protection all over the grounds and house. Gaston couldn't hurt Belle, not in the obvious, physical sense.

Words, however, could cut so much deeper than any knife. . . .

A few minutes passed till they came out again. Belle looked even paler than she had before. He thought she might be ill. A good servant, he immediately decided, didn't wait for his lady to signal him when she looked like that. If Gaston thought otherwise, there would be an apple tree in the garden. Rumplestiltskin hurried over to her. "My lady?" he asked.

"My lord Gaston and his friends will be leaving," Belle said. "Make sure their horses are made ready. Quickly."

Gaston, to his credit, looked concerned. Rumplestiltskin hesitated, wondering what had happened and if Gaston should be taught a lesson. But, Belle didn't seem angry with the oversized man. Slowly, Rumplestiltskin nodded. Now wasn't the time to ask what was wrong. For now, he could continue playing his role—and if Gaston wondered how Goodman Dove was already waiting at the front of the house with the horses saddled and ready to ride by the time they rounded up his men, he thought better of asking.

Belle, ever the proper lady no matter how much it was costing her, stood by as her guests mounted up. Gaston, took her hand (Rumplestiltskin gritted his teeth) and bowed over it. "You will think on what I said?" he asked Belle.

She nodded mutely. Gaston didn't look satisfied, but he accepted it. He got on his horse and rode away.

Belle managed to stand, straight and tall, till Gaston was out of sight. Then, she slumped, trembling from the effort. She looked ill and faint, Rumplestiltskin thought, taking her arm. It was proof of how exhausted she was that she let him do it and gripped him tight in return, hands digging into him as she leaned against him for support.

"Let me help you inside," he said, watching her anxiously. He didn't even try to get her up the stairs to the library, heading for the parlor just off the main door (the house was made to be pleasant and inviting, but he wondered if he shouldn't change it around, adding armaments and thick, defendable walls. This room felt too vulnerable and exposed with its large window facing the open road any visitors, wanted or not, would follow).

Slipping back into his real face—what Belle thought of as his real face—he helped her into a chair and poured her a glass of mild sherry. Brandy, even the weak brandies of the Marchlands would be better for whatever shock she'd received. Uisge, he thought for its strength and the familiar taste of home, would be best of all.

Yet, he'd seen how Belle had barely eaten anything. The last thing she needed was strong drink muddling her head, not when he needed to know if he should be looking for a loophole in his deal with Maurice and getting revenge on Gaston.

A little color began to come back into Belle's face as she sipped her drink. "He asked me to marry him," she said.

Rumplestiltskin stared at her. "What?" She couldn't mean—she didn't mean—

"Gaston. He asked me to marry him." She took another sip of the sherry. "He said it would be good for the Marchlands." Her voice was hollow, empty. "He says the people are cast adrift in this new world. They need a sense of being anchored, being safe. For the future lord to be married to Lord Maurice's daughter would go a long way to give them that. Or so Gaston said. Oh, that was another thing. He said Maurice would acknowledge me. Publically. And Baelfire. He said he would name him as his heir—heir presumptive, not heir apparent. Any child we have—or any child Gaston has, I suppose—" A child by another woman, she meant. She suggested Gaston cheating on her and putting his mistress' child in her son's place with a disturbing indifference. "—would have precedence." She contemplated this unknown, future usurper. "I don't know if that's a good thing or not. Gaston might forget Bae's bloodlines, but would anyone else? Or does it even matter? Would you let Baelfire near the Marchlands?"

She sounded almost hopeful, but hopeful for what? That he would let her go off with Gaston but not let her son go with her? "I—I don't—I've promised not to keep you and your son apart."

"But, you made a deal. With Maurice. Bae is your child, now, as much as mine."

"Do you—don't you want to keep him?"

Despite the sherry, Belle still looked wilted and drained. She shrugged miserably. "If I went with Gaston, if I took Bae. . . . I don't know. I can't imagine him happy in the Marchlands, not the way he's been here. Gaston can say what he likes, he won't ever love Bae. Even if he tries—And he won't try. It won't matter to him. Maurice . . . Maurice might love Bae," she said wistfully. "If he could just stop thinking of him as my husband's son, I think he could. Maybe he can love Gaston's heir. I don't know."

She shouldn't sound like this, Rumplestiltskin thought, as if having her father—her father—so much as care about her and her son was nothing more than a half-hoped dream. But, it was the resignation in her voice that terrified him. "You sound as if—are you thinking of marrying him?"

Another miserable shrug. "I don't know. It's—it's the honorable thing, isn't? If I could go back to our home village, the village where Rumplestiltskin and I lived, it's what they'd tell me to do, isn't it? For honor's sake."

Rumplestiltskin could think of a thousand things he might do to their old village for what they'd done to Belle but asking their advice on honor wasn't one of them. He tried to gather his wits. "Gaston had centuries to ask you, to adopt Bae. Instead, he let me take you both without a fight. Why would you trust him now?"

"Gaston is . . . honorable. By his own lights. If he marries me, he'll—he'll treat me as his wife. He—he wouldn't beat me. Or mistreat me. I suppose he'll even let me live my life alone once he's convinced we can't have children. He seems to think we could, but—but it's been years. Centuries. If I could have a child, surely—surely it would have happened by now?"

She was looking at a marriage hoping her husband would ignore her and set her aside, hoping he would give up any hope of having a child with her. And the best thing she could say about the bridegroom was that he wouldn't beat her. Rumplestiltskin had thought he was immune to headaches but he could feel one coming on as he tried to follow this.

But . . . a child.

Oh, no.

He remembered his conversation with Maurice. He'd told Maurice how easy it would be to make sure he had a child if he remarried. Maurice had been drunk but not so drunk he couldn't remember what was said, it seemed.

Rumplestiltskin cursed himself, a long, silent string of words learned over three centuries of dark deals.

"It's possible," he said at last. "Sometimes, barrenness is hard to cure. But, yours . . . it would be easy for you to have child. If you wanted."

It was Belle's turn to stare. "Easy? But. . . ." Her expression changed. She looked at him with something between horror and disbelief. "You know. You know why I haven't—you know."

He heard the accusation in her words, as if he were responsible. Well, he was. All of this was because of how he'd failed her. "When I brought you in from the snow, I cast a spell. It showed old injuries as well as new ones. There was so much. . . ." He knelt down in front of her and touched her arm, gently circling a spot halfway between her wrist and her elbow. No, he shouldn't touch her, not like this. . . . But, Belle didn't shrink back from him. "You broke your arm right here as a small child. Seven, I would think. Other injuries. . . . If I could kill Jones again for you, I would. I'll try to track down his skull if you want and make it into a goblet for you. I'll make his bones into a chamber pot and give them to a diarrheatic Ogre. I'm sorry. There was so much." So many horrors suddenly made clear. And he'd been blind to all of them. This small horror, if that's what it was, had almost passed by unnoticed. "I barely gave it any thought. You were dying, and I. . . . If I thought about it at all, I thought you knew. It's a foul tasting potion. Someone—whoever gave it to you might have lied about what it was for; but it has a bitter, oily taste. It would have been thick and black. You would have had to drink about a third of a cup, if they measured it properly." He didn't mention all the things that could go wrong if it wasn't measured properly, from cramps to death. It hadn't happened. Whoever gave it to her knew what they were about, thank the gods.

". . . . Smee," Belle said. "It was after I was brought on Jones' ship. He—he sent me below deck when I—I wouldn't. . . . And, then, he sent for me again. Smee gave me medicine for . . . for everything." Rumplestiltskin thought he'd begun learning some of the meanings that hid in what Belle said and didn't say. Long pauses, he thought, covered horrors, things that hurt her even to remember—or hurt her to fight not to remember, the way she did so painfully. "Smee even had a tub, a small hip-bath, filled up so I could—so could clean off all the . . . so I could clean off. It was salt water. It stung." It stung. An odd thing to remember when salt water would have been all there was for bathing at sea, something Belle would have grown used to over the years. Unless it had stung very badly, the way cuts and wounds did when salt got into them.

Belle went on. "I didn't mind. I was just so—so glad. . . . But, he gave me something. Like you described. It was more bitter than vinegar and tasted of rotting fish. Would that be it?"

"They must have used fish oil. Oil's essential, but it doesn't matter what kind. I'm surprised, though. It's vile enough without that." Rumplestiltskin resisted the urge to change the subject and go off on the finer points of potion-making, much as he might love the distraction right now. He was like Belle that way, trying not to think of horrors. "He didn't tell you what it was?"

"I—I don't know. He might have. I wasn't—I wasn't following much of what—I knew I had to—I knew Jones was waiting, and I couldn't—Smee might have told me. I don't know. Then—then all the time with Gaston, I couldn't?" The shock and pain in her eyes reminded him of soldiers in the Ogre War when they realized they were nothing more than cannon fodder, raw meat thrown into the grinder in hopes of slowing the enemy down but with no hope of survival or victory. Betrayed, he thought. She looked betrayed.

Had Jones been the sort of man to want the child if his mistress became pregnant? Doubtful. The man he'd met would have gotten rid of anything that stood between him and his personal pleasures. Rumplestiltskin knew something about the ugly, bloody ways that could be done. The potion Smee had given Belle, for example. It would also cause a child to miscarry but, unless taken very early in the pregnancy, could lead to hemorrhaging and death.

Gods, if Smee hadn't given it to her then—if he'd waited till Jones had gotten her with child—

He had to stop thinking of such things, how many different ways Belle could have died without him ever knowing what had happened to her. It would have been worse than Morraine, he thought. At least, he had known when she died. And he had been able to track down her killers and give her some kind of justice—he had known she needed and deserved justice. If Jones had killed Belle, the pirate would have thrown her corpse into the sea and never given her another thought. Rumplestiltskin would never have known.

The man Rumplestiltskin had met had never forgiven Belle for managing to escape him along with her son. If, instead, he'd killed her—or driven her to kill herself—Rumplestiltskin had no doubt he'd have forgotten her before the week was out. Jones might have managed to remember her long enough for some maudlin tale when Rumplestiltskin questioned him, something that cast the captain as noble, grief-stricken lover. More likely, he would have shrugged and, said it was Belle's fault, and moved on to more interesting subjects (like himself).

And Rumplestiltskin, fool that he was back then, would never have known it for a lie.

"No, you couldn't have a child," Rumplestiltskin said. "Not then. I'm sorry."

"Not . . . then?" The little color that had come into Belle's face drained away. "Now?"

And here was another truth that sounded too much like a betrayal, one he couldn't escape the blame for. "The medicine I gave you, the sun-flowers, it nullified the other." He thought about explaining the way it worked, how the sun-flowers had burnt up and consumed the other. . . . No. Enough hiding behind words. Belle wanted the bare, simple truth. He gave it to her. "Yes, you can have a child, now."

"Gaston's child." She might have been discussing a demon, the way she said it. "Then . . . then it doesn't matter. If Bae comes with me or not. There'd be another heir, wouldn't there?"

"Belle, you can't be thinking of marrying him! He doesn't love you. He doesn't even understand you." The man had taken Belle to his bed and used her, never seeing how that was killing something inside her. "And you can't be thinking of leaving Bae. He needs you. He—"

Belle shook her head. "He doesn't," she whispered. "My lord, you know he doesn't. I'm—you know what I am, what I've been. I'm not—not fit—to be near a child. He deserves better. And you can give him that. You are giving him that. He doesn't need me."

"Belle—"

"I'm a whore," she said softly. The word had no particular bite. She might have been discussing the chance of rain or asking if he thought it would be better to serve turnips or potatoes with dinner. "What child should be raised by a whore?"

"You're not—"

"I am." Her voice was calm, relentless. "There was a judge. I forget the name of the town, but he was a very honorable man. He ruled on it, did you know? Jones' men had grabbed a young girl in one of the ports. Her grandfather came to try and make Jones give her back. He thought the men must have acted without Jones knowledge and that he could appeal to his honor. Jones challenged him to a duel instead. He threw a sword at the old man's feet and, when he reached to pick it up, Jones ran him through before he even touched the hilt.

"The girl, her name was Verna, was in hysterics. She was ready to throw herself overboard once we were at sea and they let her up on deck. I—" Belle closed her eyes at a terrible memory, the crime she'd committed. "I convinced her to live, to endure till we made port. I managed—" There was one of those pauses, and Rumplestiltskin wondered how many nightmares were hidden under the word managed. "—I managed to get her to the town hall, to make an accusation against Jones for murder.

"The judge brought Jones in and—and Jones and his men testified that we were whores. It was true." She looked at him earnestly, wanting him to understand this was true. "When Jones—when he first brought me onboard, he told me—he told me what he wanted from me. And I said no." There was a glint of gallows humor in her eyes. "Screamed it, really." Belle shook her head. It hit him that what amused her about the memory was that she'd thought refusing Jones would make a difference. "So, he said, if I was too good to sleep with him I could—I could be with the crew. I—I—It was three days." Her calm wavered. Belle sounded like a child, he thought, a child facing horrors she still didn't understand. For a moment, she looked at him with empty confusion, her eyes begging him to explain. And, then, she went on with her story. "There were over twenty of them," she said quietly. "They drew straws—That—that was the worst thing about it. They were so organized about it all. I remember one of them drawing a straw and laughing because someone else would have to take his shift while he—while he had his turn. They—they had games they played. You could tell how often they did it. Only, they'd say things. 'Don't bruise her face. The captain won't like it.' So, you see, I had some protection. There were some things they—they wouldn't do. And—and I'd been married. That girl. It was the first time she'd ever—she'd ever—and she had none of the protection I did. The judge could see what they'd done to her. Her face—he could see it.

"But, they'd given her coins. Or said they had. Smee and I, we had to make her eat. She couldn't hold a piece of bread without our help. How could she have taken any money from them?

"But, I had." She said it indifferently. "After—after Jones asked me again, him or the crew. And I—I chose him. He made them pay me for—for 'the privilege of using the captain's woman.' That's what he called it. And Smee told me to keep the coins because—because there were things Baelfire would need.

"So, we were whores. And whores can't testify against honorable men. The judge—the judge told me I'd wasted his time and been—been mutinous. For speaking against the captain and the man who—who owned my debtor's bond. Then, he apologized to Jones and told him to punish me as he saw fit. Oh, and he levelled a fine against me, money I owed Jones for dragging an honorable man into court on—on false pretenses. He drew up the papers and added it to the bond I owed.

"Jones—Jones had me flogged after that. Till I passed out. I remember—I remember waking up in his cabin and—and hurting. Not just from the flogging. It—it always excited him. Seeing people hurt. That time was the worst. But, it was always the same when—when—The other times, they stopped sooner. I was awake when—I was awake. I think—I think they had a better feeling for how much I could take.

"But, the girl. If I'd just told her to run away. If I'd given her some of the money I had. Her home wasn't far, just a few miles up the coast. Jones wouldn't have bothered going after her. It was only because he had to go to the judge that he was angry, and he took most of that out on me.

"But, she threw herself overboard." The calm Belle had managed to keep, telling him these things as if they'd happened to someone else, as if they didn't matter, finally broke. She was crying. "They let her up on deck again once we were out at sea. And she drowned herself. I was still unconscious when it happened. Jones told me later. He told me it was what my—what my interference had done." Tears were pouring down her face.

Rumplestiltskin put his arms around her, and she let him. She returned his embrace, sobbing like a child.

"Belle. . . ." He tried to find words to make this terrible pain go away—his pain or her pain. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"It hurt," she cried. "I just want it to stop hurting. And it won't."

Words poured out of her. She told him what Jones men had done to her during those three days, what Jones did after, what happened when he shared her with other men.

A purely selfish part of Rumplestiltskin wanted her to stop. He wanted to cover her mouth and not hear these things. He wanted to cower and hide from so much truth.

Instead, he held her, pretending he was stronger than he was, trying to pretend he could protect her from her memories when all he could do was hold her and tell her over and over again how sorry he was, knowing how he had failed her.