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She’s drowsy, lying in the warm glow of the fire on the sheepskin rug at the lounge hearth, with her half-empty wine glass in her hand and the crimson dregs at the round bottom looking purple in the ruddy light.
Rum’s in his ancient antique wingback at her outstretched feet, smiling at her, eyelids low and brandy glass in-hand. His suit jacket and shirt have been discarded in favour of a soft t-shirt that Belle likes for him to wear to bed.
She’s still in her day-clothes from working in the library - a knee-length brown skirt with a pretty pink blouse and sensible matching belt - but sans her dark pumps, the pair Rumple looks at so longingly. Lacey’s shoes.
It brings a question to her lips that has been bothering her for some time.
“Do you ever think about her?” Belle asks, and Rum glances up, as if caught by her verbal hook and pulled from a daydream.
“Who?”
Belle swirls the remains of the wine in her glass. “Lacey.”
He frowns. “Of course.”
“How?”
“In passing, I suppose.”
Belle bites her lip, thinking of the shoes. “Do you miss her?”
“No.”
The reply is so sharp, so instant, that Belle only has the capacity to blink at him. It hadn’t been a fervent denial, simply factual.
A sly smile crosses her lips. “What about her…clothes?”
He pauses at that, fingers tightening about his glass, and she sees the answer in his dark eyes, his curtain of hair shadowing the brown irises, before he says it aloud.
“I like them- some of them. On you.”
Belle lets her hair fall over her shoulders as she leans back on her elbow, tilting her head and sipping at the last of her warm wine, trying not to grin as she thinks about all of things in the closet upstairs leftover from Hurricane Lacey.
As if Rumple knows what she’s thinking, he licks his lips and lets his eyes graze her stocking-clad legs.
“I could, uh…show you some examples.”
Belle sits up, casts away her empty glass, and shifts closer on her knees, until she sits at his bare feet. “That sounds like a lovely idea.”
He nods, a gulp catching in his throat as she lays her hands on his thighs. “Lovely,” he echoes.