I know it's wrong, all of it! But I can't seem to help myself. Every time he comes around – donning his smart coat, buttons shining bright, hair the color of fine warm earth like the kind that crumbles in your fingers – my legs turn to jelly! My heart goes all aflutter no sooner do I spot his russet head bobbing through the throng on market day, sweet and pale and plump as a gentlehobbit ought to be; I can't seem to stop the awful heat that sets my blood to boiling when he comes near, and it never allays, not for a moment, until he's gone from my sight (I can't bring myself to mention what other parts of me he affects with his mere presence...it would be very unladylike to do so).

He is polite in his good morning's! to every sort of hobbit, from every walk of life imaginable. From the poorest farmer to the head of the wealthiest of families, it is his custom to address those around him with kindness in his voice and a gleam of infectious cheer in his eye - having been reared on good manners. Always he greets me first with 'good morning! Lovely day, isn't it?' before he turns his attention fully to the vegetables. He has his own way of going about the business, knitting his brow so sweetly as he deliberates his choices, fidgeting to and fro, and I've figured that mushrooms are his favorite by the way his hands always reach instinctively for them first. They are such nimble, capable hands that I can't help but wonder how they would feel on skin…

I shake my head. Such strange feelings -one might say completely alien, if anyone but myself knew of their existence. I only wish I could decode them. Or at least understand their motives as they must mean something by plaguing me with such sensations. Of course, I know I find him lovely and inviting and utterly divine, and these descriptions of my high regard for him must be the cause of these odd stirrings. It is quite the confounding little riddle, to say the very least, as I cannot quite figure how they manage to be both unpleasant and agreeable all at once. They settle in the pit of my belly, like the way mother's stew simmers at the bottom of her pewter cauldron. Hot and thick and rather uncomfortable when it bubbles just under the skin and starts to burn. I wish they would be gone! They are bothersome, and distracting, and I'm certain my cheeks have turned blazing scarlet in a most unbecoming fashion.

He's in the middle of considering a fair-sized onion when, without moving a muscle, he glances upward and finds me shamelessly gawking at him. There is no mistaking the lines of discomfiture framing the sweet pinched pink of his rosebud mouth. I've been caught! Mooning after him openly! And in public, with all eyes around me as sharp as my mother's best darning needles in search of the smallest traces of newsworthy goings-on. I'll ruin us both for certain! Rumors of our affair will spread far and wide - from the front doorsteps of Bagshot Row to the furthest banks of the Brandywine River -

Fictional though our devastating tryst may be, my cheeks are flaming red again. My freckles glare like hot cinders on the hearth. He must think me silly. Perhaps barmy. Or even worse – he knows my licentious thoughts.

He inspects me carefully. Oh, that warm dark stare - like a newborn doe's!

"Are you quite all right?"

"Of course!" I say, feeling as though I might burst. I'm altogether struck breathless by the sound of his voice as it warms the air around us. My own comes out as nothing more than an airy squeak.

At long last, he's spoken directly to me! And not about the weather at all, but a different topic entirely! And such a gentle and sensuous timbre of - my knees buckle beneath me. I begin to count to myself, slowly and calmly, as I feel a faintness come over me.

He's watching me very closely now, concern flooding those soft dewy cow eyes. "Why, you look as though you're going to faint!" He exclaims. "It is not too hot for you? Yes, of course, that must be what's ailing you. Perhaps it would be best if you had a sit down and rested, you poor girl…you look a bit ashen! Come now..."

With a spritely kind of grace, he dashes round the cart and takes my hand and I am very nearly certain I have never been so happy in all my short life. Even happier than the first time I cooked eggs for mum - all by my lonesome mind you - and didn't burn them nor turn them to rubber. And even more still than the morning I woke to find the first flowers I planted for the spring had bloomed in the night. This moment reigns triumphant over them all! Bilbo Baggins, handsomest bachelor in all of the Shire, holding my hand! And what's more, his arm is wrapped around my waist!

"There." He offers a tight-lipped smile and instantaneously releases my hand. The giddiness recedes as quickly as it came. "A moment of rest will do you good, I reckon!" He holds up a finger, as if begging pardon, and begins hastily digging through the contents of his pockets. It is not very long before he finds what he is looking for – a pouch filled with coins, which he drops promptly, but most graciously, into the folds of my apron.

"Take care that you don't tire yourself," he says. "That's a good girl."

He pats me on the head, as if I were a child.

If he only knew how I ached for him! To hold his soft curls in my hands, to trace that skin so pale, like fresh milk with the tips of my fingers…Certainly, he would not think me a child then.

As I mournfully watch him depart with his basket of vegetables, slipping further and further away out of sight, I give a small hum of resignation. I know what it is I must do.

"I'm going to seduce him…it's the only way." I whisper to myself, and blush hotly as I realize I've said the words aloud.

If only I knew how!