“It’s getting late, Sam,” Rose said. “I’ll stay with him tonight. You and Elly go ahead and eat supper and then go on to bed. I’ll see you both in the morning.”

Sam went over to the oven and retrieved their supper. It was a little bit dry from the delay, but still eatable. Rose made herself a small plate to take with her, then added an extra serving of mashed potatoes and a soft-boiled egg. Sam handed her a second napkin and gave her a kiss as she headed down to the sickroom.

Frodo was still seated in the easy chair by the window in exactly the same position as Elanor had described. The little honeycomb candle cast stark shadows across the boy’s room. But Frodo did not glow. He simply looked tired.

Rose felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her heart. She suddenly realized she had dreaded going into the room. What if she did see him glow? What would she do? She did not know. ‘Thank goodness I don’t have to make that decision,’ she thought. Rose forced a smile to her lips and entered.

“I see Elly’s been at your hair again.”

Frodo smiled a greeting as Rose set the tray down on the wide windowsill. He rolled his eyes towards his forehead. “What has she done to it this time?”

“She’s tried to get it to part on one side, like all the young lads down in Hobbiton do now-a-days,” Rose said. “Can’t say as she’s been entirely successful, though.” Rose finger-combed his soft grey curls. “Your hair has a mind of its own.” She smiled as the curls found their accustomed paths. He looked much more relaxed now that his hair was tousled the way it should have been. Rose didn’t like trying to force things into shapes which weren’t part of their nature. This applied even to hair styles.

“I’ve brought us some supper.” She sat in the little wooden chair beside him and put the clean napkin in his lap.

“I’ve managed to keep the tea and a crumpet down,” he said, “but don’t expect me to be successful with that meat pie.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rose smirked. “That’s my supper. I’ve a nice bit of mashed potatoes and a soft-boiled egg for the Master of Bag End.”

“I feel like the Invalid of Bywater right now.”

“That means you’re feeling better,” Rose merrily replied. “Now eat your egg, or do I have to spoon-feed you like I do Daisy and Sammie?”

Rose was relieved to see Frodo finally eating something solid. She noted the dark circles under his eyes. The hollowness of his cheeks and around his throat. How thin he was. It broke her heart but she said nothing. Her greatest desire was to see him to ‘fill out’ again. To be a normal hobbit with good, solid hobbit meat on his too fragile bones. With a little more coaxing Rose cajoled Frodo into eating the entire egg, even though he could not finish the potatoes. When he was done, Rose removed the dishes and sat on the floor at his feet, her head in his lap and her arms wrapped about the quilt across his legs. As Frodo absentmindedly stroked her hair, memories stirred by Sam’s emotional outburst in the kitchen flooded into her mind.

Rose couldn’t help but notice the handsome older hobbit when she was growing up. Frodo tended to socialize with much younger hobbits than those of his own age. Consequently, she was occasionally included in social events where he was present. It was obvious that he loved his cousins Merry and Pippin, and was close friends with Fatty Bolger. And despite the Gaffer’s objections, Frodo was more than socially friendly with Samwise Gamgee, his gardener.

Rose remembered feeling flushes of forbidden desire rise in her whenever she was allowed to go to Bag End to ‘learn her letters and numbers.’ She first started doing so under the tutelage of kindly old Mister Bilbo Baggins, but soon the task of Samwise and Rose’s education was handed over to Frodo. He never seemed to mind.

Rose had a hard time concentrating on the letters whenever she was alone in the room with Frodo. He was so exotic! Such pale skin and dark hair and robin’s egg blue eyes. Subject of Bywater rumor in more ways than one. And she was faintly ashamed to admit her attraction to the new Master of Bag End. After all, he was so much older than she, even if he did not look it. Why, he was almost old enough to be her father. And they were of such different social settings. She was the daughter of a working-class country farmer. He was Master of Bag End and inheritor of the wealth of the Baggins family.

Lily Cotton guessed at her daughter’s infatuation and strongly disapproved. Surely young Master Baggins would eventually settle down with some high-society hobbitess and raise an heir. This sort of infatuation with young Master Baggins was very unseemly. Not at all proper. And so Rose always thought Frodo was unattainable. Or uninterested, if one believed half the East Farthing rumors about his sexual preferences. But that was not quite true. She was certain of that. More than once she caught him looking at her in ‘that way’ when he thought she was not aware. She was flattered and excited. Then she was ashamed.

It was unfair. Unfair to Sam. And Rose loved Samwise Gamgee. With all her heart she loved him. She knew she would marry him some day. She just knew it. Even if Sam didn’t know it. Rose knew it. He was everything she wanted. Well…almost everything. He was strong. And brave. And oh so polite. And he loved children and was good with them. He had a guaranteed job as the Bag End gardener. Sam was respected and solid like the good earth. He made her feel butterflies in her stomach, and courted her with the most beautiful flowers in the Shire. His smile alone could melt frozen pools. He helped the Cotton family with harvests and was friends with her brothers.

Sam was shy, but when they finally did kiss, Rose instantly knew he knew how to please a lover. And Rose suspected Sam had learned from a master. From Frodo. Sam’s touch could bring her past the point of infatuation and into full-blown passion. When he finally got up the nerve to kiss her fully, and take her into his arms for the first time…well! Rose smiled. She still became all wet and excited just remembering that first sensual embrace. Yes, Samwise Gamgee was exactly what Rose wanted. Almost.

If she could only combine the familiarity, safety, warmth and comfort of Sam, with the exotic intelligence and sensuousness of Frodo – ah! What a life that would be! It didn’t hurt matters either that Frodo was filthy rich with dragon gold. And so she sat and fantasized in the loneliness of her bedroom at night that long, long, terribly long year they were away.

That was the worst year of her life. Between the rumors that the four young hobbits had been kidnapped by the Wizard, and the troubles with the nasty, brutish Big Folk coming in from the South, life was made difficult for Rose Cotton. Her mother didn’t help either. She was always pressing Rose to forget about Sam Gamgee and marry one of the numerous suitors always coming over to the farm.

Rose was miserable. She couldn’t abandon Sam that way. Nor Mister Frodo. Sam would come back! He would! And so would Mister Frodo. There were many nights that year when Rose would run crying into her room after yet another argument with her mother. Dad was more apt to let his only daughter stop dating for a year, but Lily was dead-set against any delay. The only comfort Rose had during that terrible, lonely year lay in her imagination.

Where were they? Were they all right? Did they have enough to eat? Were they hurt? Did Sam ever think about her? Did Frodo? Were they alone or with others?

Rose’s vivid imagination always saw Sam and Frodo as a unit – impossible to separate. And when she fantasized, she found she could no longer think of one without the other. Many nights Rose would lie in bed and ease her loneliness through comforting herself. If she closed her eyes and thought long enough and hard enough, her fingers seemed to be his fingers. Which “him” it was, was almost unimportant as she lay alone in the dark and stroked herself into oblivion. Sometimes she could even bring herself to climax and some form of tortured release; calling out a name into the safety of her feather pillow. Sometimes she called ‘Sam.’ Sometimes ‘Frodo’ slipped out into the ever-waiting pillowcase. Most times she couldn’t even tell herself who it was she called for.

She ended up masturbating with jumbled thoughts of the two of them in her head. The two had become inseparably one in her mind. Sam and Frodo. Frodo and Sam. She had almost given up hope when out of the blue they reappeared. Her wildest dreams were realized when they came back. But it was a dream not without a price to pay.

Their Quest had changed them both. Sam had recovered. Frodo, however, was irreparably damaged. She knew he was changed from the War. She knew it in a way no one else in Middle Earth knew. She had finally birth his child. It had taken twelve years and two disastrous miscarriages to finally carry one of his children to term. It had been a torturous pregnancy, full of illness and depression; worry and pain. Yet also full of joy and hopefulness. The only person in Middle Earth who could give this grace to the Ringbearer. The gift of life out of emptiness.

Rose knew the fact that carrying Sammie hadn’t killed her was a miracle, and she blessed the Valar for this precious gift. She didn’t think she would survive a second pregnancy fathered by Frodo, but she was willing to give her life to keep that possibility open. She never refused his advances. Not even when she knew she was fertile.

Frodo’s soft voice interrupted her reverie. “Would you help me back into bed, love?”

Rose climbed to her feet, collecting the quilt. He needed a little help to stand and walk to the bed, but she was grateful he had that much strength. He was getting better. Elanor was right. Rose blew out the candle.

Frodo climbed into the freshly-made bed, then asked Rose to join him. “This bed is so lonely without you and Sam.”

“I’m not sure we can both fit into Frodo-lad’s bed,” Rose said as she discarded her clothes and climbed in anyway. Rose and Sam slept nude. Sometimes Frodo did as well, but most nights he was too cold to go without a nightshirt.

“I don’t take up much room anymore,” Frodo grimly jested.

“Stop that sort of talk,” Rose said. “You are besmirching my nursing skills. I’ll have you fattened up in no time. Why, even Fatty Bolger will abdicate his title when he sees you after I’m done with you.”

Frodo snickered at the absurd thought. He lay on his left side. Rose spooned up as close to him as was physically possible, her round buttocks firmly pressed into the warm hollow of his groin. His extremities were always cold. She was usually too warm. It was the perfect way for both to find the comfort they sought.

Frodo sighed in contentment and draped his arm over her waist, hand seeking and finding the tenderness of her breasts. Feather soft touches on her nipples, then fingers lightly trailing down across her tight abdomen and finally reaching the mound of soft, brown curls at her thighs. The hand never stopped its wandering journey up and down her belly in soft motions; sensuous like the ebb and flow of a moonlit tide.

“You’re going to have another baby, Rose-love,” Frodo whispered.

“How do you know when even I’m not sure yet?” Rose countered.

Frodo remained silent, his hand gently stroking her belly. She could hear his steady breathing.

“It’s not as if I get much time off, what with being married to you two randy lads,” she teased, stopping his hand from descending any lower, and rolling over to look him in the eye. “Come on. Tell me. This will be the eighth time you’ve let me know I was pregnant before I told either you or Sam. And it’s the second time you’ve told me before I even knew it myself. How do you know?”

“I… don’t… know…” He stroked her naked shoulder. “Honestly, Rose, I don’t know. It’s not as if I can control it. I didn’t used to be this way. But now… Well... The thought pops into my mind unannounced.”

“And you still won’t let me tell Sam that you can do this,” Rose whispered. “Why don’t you tell Sam about this? It’s been going on for years.”

Frodo moved his hand down from her shoulder, trailing his fingertips across the arch of her collarbone, up the sensitive skin of her neck and to her full lips. He lightly tapped her closed mouth with a forefinger. It reminded her of a child slyly indicating to a co-conspirator that silence was to be maintained. “No telling Sam. You promised.”

“Yes, yes, I promised a long time ago,” she sighed. “But tell me why we’re to not tell Sam about this?”

Rose could barely make out his face in the night. But she could hear the sadness in Frodo’s voice. “He already thinks of me as some strange being who is not entirely normal. And he’s right. I don’t want to add fuel to that fire.”

She felt his hand cup her face in a tender caress, his nimble clever fingers briefly toying with her hair. Her hand met his, and she kissed the open palm. He sighed and rolled over to lay on his back. Rose nestled her pillow up against his cold left shoulder, then moved into her accustomed position under his arm. Her own arm stretched out to lay on his narrow chest. She moved the covers up over them, then gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before settling in for the night.

“I wouldn’t want you any way other than the way you are,” she whispered. But he was already asleep.