Page 45 of The Rules of Matrimony (The Matchmaking Mamas #4)

A month and a half later.

Ian looked around the Dome at the smiling faces of his Rebel friends, his hands covering Amie’s eyes as he led her inside. The temple had been the Rebels’ secret meeting spot since they were children, and he had been anxiously waiting for the day he could share it with Amie.

“Should we make her take the Rebel Oath?” Jemma asked from somewhere beside him.

“Next time,” Paul said from the sofa. “Let her see what she is getting herself into first.”

“Your hands are too big,” Tom teased, his arm around Cassandra. “You’re going to suffocate our Lady Brilliant before she even has a chance to learn to like us.”

Lady Brilliant was Tom’s new nickname for Amie. As soon as he’d heard Amie call Ian Lord Grumpy, he’d announced it utterly brilliant, which had quickly evolved into Lady Brilliant. Like all of Tom’s odd names, it had stuck.

“You can breathe, can’t you, darling?” Ian asked, leaning down and catching his favorite vanilla fragrance.

“I can breathe.”

“Good. Just one more step.” Ian directed her to where she would have the best view of the circular room. “Ready?”

“I’ve been ready since you told me about this place,” Amie said.

Without further ado, he dropped his hands and let them rest on her arms as she took it all in.

“Well?” Miles asked, Tiny snuggled in his arms. Apparently, their little terrier liked tall men. “Is the Rebel lair like you imagined?”

“Not at all,” she said, laughing. “It’s bigger and smaller all at the same time.”

“Give her the royal tour,” Jemma insisted, looping her arm through Miles’s, the wide skirt of her rather unique plum dress nearly surrounding her husband’s legs.

“A tour?” Ian chuckled. “You can see everything by standing in one spot. There’s only this one room.”

“I’ll do it,” Tom released his hold on Cassandra, which was a notable feat. He had been hovering over her since he’d learned she was with child. He walked over to a set of wooden chairs. “Paul and Louisa generally sit here. Paul is the most rigid of us all, so he doesn’t get any cushions.”

Paul balked from his seat beside Louisa on the sofa. “So the only reason I get to sit here today is because Louisa just had a baby?”

Ian hadn’t even seen their baby yet, as he and Amie had arrived the day before yesterday and Paul and Louisa the day before that. He was eager to remedy it.

“Of course that is the only reason,” Tom said. “Louisa is supposed to be in confinement, so we gladly gave up our seats for her comfort. You’re merely lucky to be attached to her.”

Cassandra elbowed Tom. “Don’t listen to him. He’s jealous that you let Lisette hold the baby first. Babies are all he can think about from sun up to sun down.”

Ian hadn’t even noticed the small bundle of blankets in Lisette’s arms. Lisette’s soft, blonde curls on either side of her face swayed from side to side as she dropped her head to stare at the baby. He would have to get in line to hold the little thing after Tom.

“Never mind that,” Tom said. “I can be patient for a moment longer. But only for a moment, mind you, Lisette.”

Lisette laughed and leaned into her husband, Walter, to let him see the baby too. “We will share, I promise.”

“Finish the tour,” Ian prompted.

“The tour! Right. My wife and I usually sit where Paul is, and across from us sit Lisette and Walter and Miles and Jemma. The four of them can get quite cozy since Lisette and Jemma are inseparable and don’t mind the crowding. But the crowning element of the tour is just here.” Tom scurried to the head of the room—if there could be one in the circle, this was it.

Tom rested his hands on the green upholstered chair with the tall back. “This, Lady Brilliant, is our Mother Hen’s throne of putrid.”

Amie laughed. “Throne of what?”

“The name is self-explanatory, my lady,” Miles said, and everyone laughed.

“You haven’t finished,” Jemma prompted. “There’s one seat left.”

Ian grinned. He’d been waiting for this part.

“Perhaps you recognize this,” Tom said, moving to the chair directly beside Ian’s throne.

Amie turned her head to look up at Ian. “It does look a great deal like the one in our townhome. The one you always like to sit in.”

“It’s the very same,” Ian said with pride. “My Pocock original. I had it sent up just for you.”

Tom cleared his throat to capture their attention again. “Instead of getting you a new, pretty chair with all his gobs of money, Lord Grumpy sent over his well-used favorite chair to be your new throne.”

“It’s sentimental,” Lisette explained. “I think it’s terribly romantic.”

Ian slipped his hand down to find Amie’s and wove their fingers together. “Well, Lady Brilliant? Care to be seated?”

She eyed him, laughing at his use of Tom’s nickname. “I would be honored.”

Ian led her through the middle of the room to her chair and held it out for her. She relaxed into it and sighed. “It’s comfortable in all the right places.”

“It’s Moroccan leather. Wait until you put your feet up.” He turned to Tom. “See? I knew she would love it.”

Ian planted himself on his throne and captured Amie’s hand again. He never liked to be parted from her for long if he could help it. He still couldn’t believe what had possessed him to create rule number one all those months before. It was by far the most idiotic idea he’d had to date.

Ian used his free hand to motion to the room at large. “Everyone else, find a seat. I have an announcement to make.”

“I do love announcements,” Jemma said, pulling Miles toward the sofa.

When everyone was seated, Ian began. “This is not exactly how I imagined us all ending up—married.”

Everyone chuckled. It was a far cry from the day not many years ago when they had all pledged to stay single against the threat of the Matchmaking Mamas.

“But we can all agree,” he continued, “that we’re all better for it.”

Miles put his arm around Jemma, and Lisette’s and Walter’s arms were already entwined. Tom winked at his Cassandra, and Paul mirrored Louisa’s ever-present smile and took her hand. There was a feeling about the room—a rightness Ian had never imagined possible. He believed Amie’s hand in his had a great deal to do with it.

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of parchment. “The Rebels are twice as many as we started with, which means we have been able to make twice the difference in the world with our efforts. I received a letter just this morning that I have been anxious to read to you.”

He unfolded the paper and found the section he desired. “This is from Sir James Mackintosh. I wanted you to be among the first to hear the good news:

“Our fight for progress, which has been more than a decade in the making, has passed from the House of Commons to the House of Lords and has been given the Royal Seal. The criminal law, as we know it, will no longer exist with the creation of what will be known as the Judgment of Death Act. This, along with a few other acts, will lift the death penalty from over one hundred thirty crimes. In all but treason or murder, judges will now use personal discretion to execute a lesser sentence. ”

Gooseflesh rippled down his arms at the mere thought of the hundreds of thousands of lives that would be spared in the coming years. “Thank you for your help, Rebels. The part we played might have been small, but any effort for good is noteworthy and the effect immeasurable.”

A humbled silence permeated the room. There would still be evil in the world and never enough of them to save everyone, but this felt good.

“Are you trying to make us cry?” Tom asked, wiping at one eye. There was no teasing in his voice this time. Cassandra leaned her head on his shoulder.

“If he is, it’s working,” Lisette said, mopping her face with her husband’s handkerchief.

“Well done, Ian,” Amie whispered from beside him. “You changed the world after all.”

In his small way, he supposed he had. But what mattered more was that he had changed himself. “Thank you, Amie. For helping me.”

It did not take long after Ian’s announcement for all of them to shift their focus and crowd around Paul’s baby, where Ian finally got his turn to hold her.

A girl.

And her name was Katherine Harriet, after both Paul’s and Louisa’s mothers. Fitting that the mothers should be honored since they really deserved a thank-you for all their effort in bearing children and then tricking them into marriage so that more children could be born.

Ian held Katie-Cat, as Tom had dubbed her, close to his chest, bringing up his large finger for her dainty hand to grasp.

“She’s perfect,” Amie said, standing on her toes to see the baby.

He lowered Katie so Amie could see better. “She is indeed.”

“I haven’t seen you hold a child before, but I can tell you have a fondness for them,” she said.

Ian had to agree. “I never had younger siblings, but I rather like Tom’s son, and I have a feeling that little Katie will be just as easy to love.”

“Good.”

He raised a brow. “What does that mean?”

“Well, our children might be a little different. ”

“Different?”

“Madness runs on both sides of the family. Do they have a chance?”

He chuckled. “I’ve always thought that those who are mad generally possess a higher capacity to feel. So yes, our children have a chance. They might even be happier than we are.”

“Beautifully said, Ian.” She grinned at him before reaching to run her hand over Katie’s feather-soft brown hair.

“What project comes next?” Miles asked, coming to stand by them. “None of us can be without a purpose for long.”

Miles had an entire congregation to care for, yet he always had more to give.

Ian hummed. “The prisons will soon be pushed past their capacity. With less hangings and more prisoners, we’ll need prison reforms straightaway.”

The room quieted at that moment, so all the other Rebels heard his response.

“Is that possible?” Louisa asked from the sofa.

Paul stretched his arm around his wife. “If the criminal law can be overturned, anything is possible.”

Ian let Amie take the baby. “I’ve already written to Robert Peel and asked to join his committee.”

“You know we will support you,” Tom said. “Let me know if you need someone to sneak inside the prisons in disguise. I might know someone capable.”

Cassandra grimaced. “If it’s a last resort.”

The visiting took up again, and Amie passed the baby to Jemma.

Ian leaned in and whispered, “Are you ready to return to the house?”

Amie’s brow pulled in the middle. “You don’t want to stay and talk longer with your friends?”

He grinned and curled an arm around her waist. “I’m ready to be alone with my wife again.”

She leaned into him, molding to his side as if they were made to fit each other. “They will expect you to visit longer. I doubt you will be able to sneak past eight other people in such small quarters.”

If he stared into those mesmerizing pools of brown much longer, he was certain those same eight people would throw him out and no sneaking would be necessary. “With all this talk of missions, I was reminded that my primary responsibility belongs to caring for you. I am not one to procrastinate my duty.”

“Your duty?” She raised a critical brow.

“My honor,” he quickly corrected, her smile instantly reappearing. That smile was everything to him. He couldn’t resist and leaned down, capturing her soft mouth with his own. Marriage didn’t have to be a man fighting against his desire to love and be loved in return. When done right, it was beautiful. In the month and a half that they had truly spent as man and wife, he had doubted his abilities in a lot of areas—including the way he bumbled his words. He wasn’t perfect, and that much was painfully obvious, but he trusted himself with Amie in a way he had never thought possible. The protective instinct that he felt toward her in the beginning of their relationship was the same instinct that assured him of his unwavering loyalty to her. He would never give her reason to doubt him.

He loved this woman in his arms. She completed him. And because of her, he hoped to become a better man. Because progression would always start with him. Any sacrifice or effort was worth it to deserve her.