Another door, browner, newer, and quite less round, bore the quick, light rapping of a well-expected visitor. 'I have something for you,' were the first words spoken inside the cottage.
'Susan, why have you called me here all alone, why in secret from Lily?' Frodo ignored her previous statement. 'I've come here to contest your actions far more than at your request. Why do you plague her like this? Haven't you hurt her enough?'
'Mr. Baggins, I must emphatically disagree with you,' Susan responded in a voice which was anything but emphatic. 'I've done nothing in this to hurt the girl, only to help her.'
'Help her? How help her when you beg my lies?'
'By what I offer in return.'
'There is nothing which can be given in return to warrant my lies to her, nothing in the world, in the whole of Middle Earth,' Frodo asserted painfully. 'All other lies and deceit which have come her way she has endured and mine too, if I made her, but with so many lies on account of me in the first, and even if there were not, how could I? How can I? You'd wish it, I'm sure. You always have wished ill on us. I know; it is tradition, after all,' he spat resentfully back at her, wondering why he hadn't reported Bella's call at the Hill to Lily in the first place.
'Mr. Baggins, I tell you this. My request was necessary. If Lily had known you were coming, chances are she'd've come along. . . Or at least demanded an account when you returned. This, young Mr. Baggins, would wreck my purpose, and yours, if I may guess that much,' Susan explained calmly, smugly.
'Young Mr. Baggins' purpose is to love her,' he contested, abhorring her condescension.
'Young Mr. Baggins' purpose,' Susan corrected, 'is to marry her.'
'Love? Marry? I loved her when I thought I'd never have her, far more than I can say for you when you did. But, let me guess, your purpose, once again, is to keep us apart with some newfangled ploy,' he said as he followed his host deeper into the cottage.
'No,' she said.
'Odd, you're usually more blunt,' and Frodo was usually less cocky.
'Mr. Baggins, leave now if you don't care to know what exactly my purpose was in calling you here. I don't need your scorn.'
'Good day, then,' Frodo farewelled and turned on his heal as Susan had days earlier to leave.
'Wait,' the older hobbit called after him. Frodo only turned stood in calm defiance on the walk. 'I asked you here because I have something for you. You don't have to say anything at all, and you aren't bound to use it as I think and wish you might. But only take it,' and she thrust as a small package bound in brown paper and string into his hands.
'What is it?' he inquired coldly.
'My wedding ring.'
A/N: Reeeeeview!