Sam's other motive had not been lost on Frodo. In fact, Frodo had tut-tutted to himself, leave it to Sam to leave such an obvious trail of hints. He had sent his earnest, pretty younger sister to serve as Frodo's housekeeper, cook, and when needed nurse, so surely before long her gentle ministrations would coax him back to more-or-less good health, and even if he didn't marry (her or anyone else) and beget a large brood of children, he still would live out his days in relative contentment.

Simple, no? The plans of hobbits were never complex affairs; and the Gamgees were in no position to challenge this fact.

But this was Frodo Baggins, and "simple" was not in his fate's vocabulary.

He could understand Sam, of course – Sam was, as like as not, in the highest heights of Valinor after having wed Rosie, and wanted to spread the boons of female companionship. Sam could have also been repaying him in kind for the time that he, Frodo, had bodily shoved a younger and more bashful Sam into Rosie's arms.

Indeed, whether Sam intended this or not, his act was a repeat performance of some years ago, when Bilbo had first disappeared and before Frodo had taken up his mantle of oddity.

No sooner had the hullabaloo of Bilbo's long-expected party settled down, when a string of mommas and their recently-of-age daughters began to appear on his doorstep, bearing homemade dishes of every kind and lamenting how hard it must be for the new master of Bag End to be all alone in his large smial, and for his uncle to have disappeared in such a bizarre manner.

They were all nice enough lasses, except for the few who looked at Bag End like it was already their property. But in the end they had not much more than food and domesticity on their minds, and like the majority of hobbits past their tweens, their eyes would glaze over when matters beyond the borders of the Shire were discussed. The more polite and motivated ones tried to hide it, but by thirty three Frodo was a fair judge of character. So he acted charming, served afternoon tea, and sent them on their way. Eventually, they stopped coming and he breathed a sigh of relief, for he no longer had to scratch his head at out how to dispose of dozens of pies of varying quality, without — the anathema! — of resorting to food waste or risking the pies' originators finding out.

That felt like a thousand years ago.

That said, unnatural privations and inhuman torture of the quest nonwithstanding, Frodo was still a red-blooded hobbit and he did have shame (a great deal of it, in fact), so the daily arrival of a pretty lass induced him to scrape himself out of bed, even after a bad night's sleep as if he was still on the road. He would then change his clothes and bathe, which prior to Marigold's arrival he had done only when he went out – and that was no longer often. At times it annoyed him, or felt awfully dull and unnecessary: for if at first he had merely been tired, by this time there was a dull ache in his chest all the time, and it made him feel like everything was lackluster and unimportant. His feelings, stale and sad, draped over him like a wet cloak. At times he wept, heart wracked by a nameless pain for something he could not place… or perhaps could place far too well. But in the end, lying in bed never brought him any solace. That much he already knew.

Soon enough, the two of them fell into a routine, and over the course of the first week, they unpacked two trunks, and Marigold had done some superficial sweeping — the deep-clean would come later, once the clutter was more at bay. The fireplace was once again being tended to, the laundry was steadily being sorted, the larders full, and the dishes washed. The stews were no longer a ghastly concoction of day old leftovers. Sam would come over with some regularity as well, to do the gardening and share a meal, and he mercifully kept the conversation light and the encouragement plentiful.

And Marigold noticed things, too. For instance, she had noticed that he did not like to open the shutters — the newly rebuilt Bag End had shutters — and sat away from the windows whenever he could. When she did open the shutters – for he could not very well insist that they stay closed all day – the noises from outside would make him tense up, and it was not an easy thing to hide, try as he might to breathe as slow and deep as he could, as the elven healers had taught him.

Of course, Marigold made no indication that she noticed, but simply asked, "Mr. Frodo, have you thought about getting eaves? They'll keep the sun out and keep the nice furni-shins from losing color, if you follow me, without making it black as night." She had given a winsome smile. "And keep curious folk from peeping in, of course."

And Frodo breathed a sigh, for there had never been any eaves at Bag End, but it was a very natural thing to have. So they lost no time in commissioning some from Michel Delving. Sam summarily put them up when they arrived.

In fact, though grown and trained into a trade, Marigold still had an artlessness about her, that under normal circumstances would have amused him – if amusement was not an emotion like a broken string.

"Lor' bless me, Mr. Frodo, these are not all clothes!" she had exclaimed when they got to the trunks that contained his wardrobe – and previously Bilbo's before him.

She then quickly looked away and bit her knuckle, like a child caught stealing dessert. "I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean–"

Frodo came to kneel by her side.

"No need to be sorry," he said. "Most of these are Bilbo's." He remembered being amazed, himself, that Bilbo had several rooms devoted to clothes when he first moved to Bag End.

He fingered an embroidered waistcoat, wistfully, thinking of the old hobbit.

"I couldn't bring myself to give them away, though, so I've been lugging them from place to place. They probably don't even fit me."

Marigold, for her part – he had already noticed – had only three dresses, and one looked like it had been made "to grow into," the hem let out several times. But he could not discern envy in her manner – the envy that, in most other hobbits, had made him so often devolve into awkward throat-clearing and euphemisms like "comfortable." She took out a dinner-jacket and held it up to the light, running her fingers over the cross-hatched stitching of the velvet collar. She looked like she had been allowed, as a Yuletide present, to actually touch one of the exhibits at the Mathom House.

"Well, if that's the case," she finally said, "we had best pre-serve them, if you get my meaning." She placed the jacket on the dining table, and smoothed out the fabric. She squinted and shook her head. "It's creased, from lying folded up so long, begging your pardon. But I know just the thing."

Frodo had devolved into memories of Bilbo, feeling sick at heart, so he looked up only reluctantly. His poor old uncle's mind was starting to get addled, and he didn't even write letters anymore.

"Steam," said Marigold simply.

"Steam?"

"Yes, sir. It releases wrinkles – all's needed is some gentle pulling. If you don't mind, I'll unpack these, and then I'll need to take the bathroom for a spell. It will take boiling a might of water for a long time, but the creases should come out, and then we can hang them up nice and neat."

Frodo said he did not mind. A part of him wondered why he hadn't hired a housekeeper sooner. But though she was a delightful, resourceful creature, and the hobbit-hole was starting to feel brighter with her presence, he suddenly wanted to be left alone. She seemed to sense that, and set to work without another word.

She cooked expertly, too, and made herself at home in the kitchen — with the enthusiasm expected of any hobbit maid — but Frodo soon realized this could prove a problem.

The hobbits were not the most technologically advanced lot, but when it came to cooking and preparing food, they had more appetite for innovation than most. Enter, to that end, the whistling kettle: an excellent way to know, from the other end of a sizeable hobbit-hole, that the tea was ready to be brewed, whatever pursuit one was lost in at that moment. Frodo owned one of these new-fangled contraptions, purchased before his adventure at some expense from the dwarves, and as a hobbit and a fairly thoughtful one with money for his caste, he did not have the heart to make it a mathom when he came back to the Shire, only to realize that the kettle's whistle sounded, chillingly, like a Nazgul cry. At first, he had tried to pry out the mechanism that made the whistling noise, but to no avail – this is where he cursed his stubby fingernails. He then tried to ignore the distressing association, but soon found that the sound never failed to throw him into a cold sweat. At one point his vision actually turned dark and he felt faint, the black armor and black hoods appearing in his mind's eye.

He had climbed Mount Doom, and taken on sword, sting and tooth, only to be undone by a tea kettle at home. The irony was too painful for words.

Eventually, he tried to go without tea altogether – for getting another kettle meant going out, and once a few wealthy hobbits had learned of his acquisition they had wanted to have the same, so Frodo had been instrumental in brokering a deal between the dwarves and the local metalsmith, who had put the kettles up for sale. The metalsmith could not have forgotten his role in the affair, so undoubtedly he would have been curious why, suddenly, Mr. Baggins would want a plain kettle. But then he got easily cold, even in the summer now, and warm drinks settled him down when he was tense or restless. And in the end, he could not go without his favorite comfort – though in his present state he could not always bring himself to care about the finer points of it all, or even the less fine points, such as not leaving the brew in the pot overnight. He was, after all, an enthusiast of tea just as many hobbits were enthusiasts of pipe leaf, so he took up waiting in the kitchen and snatching up the kettle the moment the water began to churn.

Marigold's arrival would complicate things a bit.

The kitchen would now be her domain, and beyond showing her where things were kept, he really did not have much business being there. He considered giving the kitchen a wide berth, but this would not look natural either, and yet if he came too close at the wrong time…

In the end, he settled on saying he was particular about making tea himself, and that the special dwarvish kettle was for tea and nothing else. (At times, he thought to himself, a reputation for oddity was quite convenient). Marigold, certainly, accepted the circumstances without question, so every day prior to their afternoon tea, or indeed whenever he felt like a spot of something warm, he took up joining her in the kitchen.

He soon found that pretending to read and watching her, bustling about by the hearth, her movements skilled and spare, was calming in a way. She didn't hum or sing like many hobbits did while cooking, but the clop-clop of the knife, the rustle of herbs and the clink of plates felt like conversation enough. Just like Sam, she was unassuming and generally easy to be with.

In their early days, Marigold would sometimes go on walks with him and Sam, when Sam was called upon to mind her, and she was always well behaved but shy – more eyes and ears than mouth, they said of hobbits like her. (Though, if Sam was to be believed, she had some secret mettle on her, having bitten a chunk out of his leg when the two were very young hobbits). And as she grew older, she was still more reticent than the average hobbit lass, but apprenticeship had settled well on her. He had seen her grow more expressive and cheerful over the years, and she was now given to standing up much straighter, and taking charge of things much more readily. He wagered she could find a way to talk to anyone now, and convince them that all would be well in the world.

Well, almost anyone. He himself still felt like one wrong step, and she would go running back to Bagshot Row, never to speak to him again, not even to meet his eyes in the street.

Though, would she?

He watched her deftly chop the carrots, fingers curled away from the knife. A girl grown up, her home razed and trampled over, tending to soldiers and now caring for him – a broken-down veteran of war, if you like. She had been in the Lockholes, too, when he had liberated the prisoners – and emerged looking certainly worse for wear, so he could only imagine what other horrors she had endured. And then there was him and Sam, lying on a rock amid flows of lava, waiting for the world to end. They were, each and every one of them, changed, and so it went.

But like many clever, artless people, Marigold was also curious. So in the end, in spite of his efforts, her question was still not long in coming.

"Mr. Frodo," she said, perhaps on the third day of the second week, "I couldn't help but he curious about something, begging your pardon." The two of them were in the kitchen – Frodo taking his tea, and Marigold preparing dinner.

Frodo's stomach felt cold, and dropped into his knees. But he gathered up his courage to reply.

"Go on, Mari, what are you curious about?" he said, trying to make his tone light. "Curiosity is a virtue."

Everything felt a little farther away than it should have been.

"The kettle, begging your pardon." Marigold looked up from the cutting board and gave a small smile. Her hands were covered in flour, as she had been working with the dough.

"You always take it off right as it starts to boil, not letting it sit for a moment. Is that a better way of doing things? If so, I'd love to learn to make tea better."

Is that a better way of doing things.

Marigold's speech (just like her brother's, for that matter) never sent one searching for the dictionary, but the brilliant arrangement of eight simple words was healer-speak and no mistake. He had interacted with enough healers by now to know that they held as some common professional duty to ask questions that allowed their charges to save face, if face needed saving.

He nearly wept with relief. Perhaps Sam knew what he needed better than he did himself.

"Yes, indeed it is," he replied. "When I was abroad, I learned some varieties of tea need to be brewed with water that's just barely boiled. Let it get too hot, and the leaves get scorched. They even say, 'a kettle left long on too long will sour the pot'."

He felt ill at ease, lying like that, but it proved easier than he thought.

Marigold nodded pensively. If she thought this was odd, her face did not betray it.

"That's why, coincidentally, they sometimes install whistling mechanisms," he went on. "And they sound awful, too, because it's meant to warn you when the water's gotten too hot. That kettle has one of them, but I don't like the sound of it, at all."

The words came tumbling out before he could stop them. Maybe he couldn't tell such a black lie to Marigold Gamgee after all.

"Well, goodness me, Mr. Frodo, why didn't you say so?" She smiled. "I can make sure the water don't get too hot, so you needn't trouble yourself."

"Ah, but I do want to trouble myself," Frodo returned, shrugging his shoulders. He turned his eyes away from the blasted kettle and toward the food before her. "It's good to trouble myself from time to time, or I'd be quite useless."

"Nonsense, Mr. Frodo, you're not useless." She shook her head, returning to her work. "You help a great deal."

"Oh? How exactly?"

She shrugged.

"You're here. You're in charge of the big ideas of how to run Bag End. I'm just carrying them out."

"Ah. Well that changes things, certainly."

"And you help me feel less lonely, anyhow."

She set about cutting the dough into thin, short strips. Frodo studied the several dishes before her - one filled with butter, another with grated cheese, another with eggs, and the last one with fatty bacon.

"Marigold, what are you making?"

"Oh." She looked down and inexplicably blushed. "I— I made it up."

Frodo raised his eyebrows.

"I saw you weren't eating well, sir, and putting down your fork after a few bites, and I thought it was unnat'ral, seeing how thin you are. So I says to myself: Self, how do you pack as much sub-stance as pos'ble into the fewest amount of bites?"

"And how would you?" Frodo asked indulgently.

He had to admit, it was getting closer to dinnertime, but he was hardly hungry. Food made him dizzy and ill since he'd returned, even the most comforting of Shire-fare. This made him feel exquisitely guilty when Marigold served up what ordinarily would have been delectable pot pies, meat falling off the bone, and rich mushroom stews that made the whole house smell like heaven. Sam finished Frodo's leftovers whenever he thought Marigold wasn't looking, and what he didn't finish Frodo insisted they take to Bagshot Row, but this allayed his feelings only a little.

Marigold lit up.

"Ah, well! Let me show you!"

She slid a generous pad of butter onto the pan over the fire, and it began to fizz. Next, it was the bacon's turn, and as the hissing grew louder, Frodo winced. Mercifully, Marigold was turned away by that point. Frodo started to rack his brain for an excuse to make his escape, though it was painful – Marigold just looked so delighted. He gritted his teeth. Making up new dishes. Too clever by half… He found himself slightly irritated – without just cause, he knew, which annoyed him more still.

"In a word," she went on cheerfully, keeping her eyes on the frying pan as she stirred the contents with a spatula, "I have the dough cut up fine, so you don't even have to chew it, and I fry it up, letting the egg and the cheese coat it. The egg helps the cheese stick, like glue. And the bacon's got still more fat…"

"Alright, that's sounds wonderful, Marigold," Frodo said, standing up hurriedly and backing away towards the door. "I very much look forward to trying it."

The tea he had come to make had long since been drunk, and he placed the cup and the saucer in the sink.

"I have to ask Sam if he has any other requests for dinner, though, before it's too late. I'm sorry…"

If Marigold felt slighted by the fact that her brother might not like her food, or that his actions were in direct contradiction to his words, she said nothing, and Frodo did not stay long enough to witness any further reaction.

He rushed out, for the hissing – though not quite as high-pitched and piercing as the Nazgul-kettle – was nonetheless starting to make his hair stand on end. He sighed in relief once he was out of earshot.

Poor girl. That was not very polite – and she was trying so hard. Hobbits were not generally fond of innovation, preferring what was tried and true, but he, the odd one out and from Buckland besides, had always taken it upon himself to oppose the general trend.

He figured he would have to make it up to her another time. For now, he had to find Sam and tell him about the tea-making customs he had supposedly learned of in his travels, and hope Sam wouldn't ask too many questions about why he had not done the same.