Denethor felt a sense of peace come over him as he worked quietly in the garden he was creating for Finduilas. With his trowel, he dug a little hole in the fragrant earth and placed a seedling in it. He steadied it in the soil by gently patting handfuls of earth around it.

This was his secret way of making amends to his family when he felt that he had hurt them.

Every time he felt he'd done something wrong, Denethor would go out into this little garden and plant something beautiful for Finduilas or Boromir. The more he'd hurt them, the more beautiful the new plant would be. He poured all his guilt, and all his sense of inadequacy into the creation of this little garden for those he loved most.

As he worked, Finduilas came out to him. She sat down on a wooden bench and smiled down at him as he worked. "Your garden is so big now," she said, "and so lovely… there are so many beautiful plants in it…"

His trowel dropped from his hand. The garden was so big now. She didn't know that every plant in the garden represented something he'd done to hurt someone. And there were so many beautiful plants in it. The more beautiful ones were those he'd planted when he'd hurt them more. He had no right to treat his family like this… what his wife had said had shown him what kind of a person he was.

Finduilas wondered what she had said wrong. She had simply made a commonplace remark about the garden, and there he was, looking utterly miserable.

"Come, sit by me, my love," she said gently. He gave her a wan smile as he stood up and walked to her. She looked up at him in affectionate concern, as he stood before her.

"O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake
And no birds sing."

He smiled. He loved it when she spoke poetry to him.
"Your voice is like music, my beautiful Finduilas."
He sat down beside her.

"Come," she said. "Tell me what worries you."

"Oh Finduilas, how I wish that could take you away from this stone city to a fresh, fragrant mountainside and surround you with beautiful growing things. There you would grow strong, you would thrive…"

"But have I ever said to you that I am unhappy here?"

"No, but I know it."

"How could you know it, if I have never said so?"

Denethor sighed. He didn't need her to tell him of it. He could see it for himself. This wretched place made her wilt, like a delicate flower in the blazing sun.

"I am cursed," he said. "I am doomed to spend my life pitting my meagre strength against the Great Shadow of Mordor…and I must spend my whole life fighting it, although I know for certain that it is too strong for me, and it will break me in the end…
And why, my love, why must I inflict this curse on you, and on the children too…"

"You are strong," she said. "Stronger than you think…"

He shook his head. "If you would know the true worth of the wretch sitting beside you, just think of the way his father looks at him – the revulsion, the disgust…"

"Hush," she said, taking his clenched fist in her hand and smoothing his long fingers out. "I know that the Unnamed will find you to be a more formidable adversary than any mysterious Thorongil…"

"And how does my lady presume to make a military judgement so different from my father's?"

"She knows that certain of her prickly husband's more unattractive qualities will prove to be invaluable in the fight against the Unnamed."

Denethor's eyes were smiling now. Finduilas could say anything about him. Anything she liked. Because he knew she loved him.
"And what are these qualities you speak of, my lady?"

She smiled at him affectionately. "His stubbornness, his cursedness, his grim tenacity of purpose… when he turns his venom on Mordor, I wouldn't like to be in the Unnamed's shoes…"

She could feel his lanky frame shaking with laughter now, as he leaned comfortably against her.

She was right, he thought. She was always right. And oddly enough, she loved him despite all those 'less attractive qualities.' Finduilas did not love some idealised picture of him that lived in her imagination. She loved her prickly, venomous husband for what he was. Before he knew what he was doing, Denethor had taken her tenderly in his arms and was giving her a prickly, venomous kiss.

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Finduilas' poem is a quotation from 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci,' by John Keats.