“Does it matter?”
“No.” It wouldn’t make telling him any easier. She buried her face in her hands.
He pried one away and cradled it between his. “Do you want to rest?”
She shook her head. He was behaving so patiently, which was a balm of sorts. Though if he’d been agitating her, she could have blurted it all out. Then it would be over. Done.
With her hand in his, he said, “I thought Beatrix was the only walking ghost I’d ever meet.”
“I told you I knew what it was like.”
“You did,” he agreed. “I can only imagine how difficult it was. If my mother returned to my life, I’d do anything she asked of me.”
For so many years, Diana had schemed and manipulated and lied, exactly as Widow had directed. She never allowed herself to consider the repercussions, or question if the outcome justified the means to achieve it. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. And I’m sorry for everything I did, trying to fulfill her wishes. None of it warranted my lies.”
She swallowed. “I understand why you’d never trust me again.”
“I’m not giving her the power to drive another wedge between us,” he argued, a threatening edge to his voice. “And I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t trust you. Now it’s time for you to trust me.”
When shame choked her throat, he sank down next to her on the bed and stroked her hand encouragingly. “Tell me all of it. Starting with when she resurfaced in your life.”
“She was never bedridden,” Diana whispered. “One day, she simply disappeared. Without a trace. My father spared no expense searching for her in secret, while maintaining the charade that she was ill to stave off scandal. He was so ashamed. And when he accepted she’d abandoned us, her desertion became our shameful secret.”
“He should never have asked that of you.”
“For all we knew, shewasdead somewhere. I’d thought of her that way.” It had been an easier way to accept her loss. “Eight years ago, around the time you stopped writing to me, the Stags began recruiting me. They communicated by clandestine notes from someone who called herself Widow. A year later, when we were in Switzerland, searching for another treatment for Papa’s illness, Widow finally wrote for me to meet her face-to-face. I followed the address to an old convent.”
“Where your mother was waiting.” He sounded disgusted by the ploy.
“When I saw her in that wretched basement, I thought I was going mad. And then I was so furious, thoughts of violence flitted through my brain.”
“I can’t imagine that,” he said dryly.
“Before I could find the words to ask why she’d abandoned us, my mother revealed that she’d sacrificed her old life to serve a higher calling. She told me about the women she was helping. The stories of the horrors they escaped still haunt my nightmares.” Her voice cut out as she fought off a shudder. “When the police wouldn’t help them, my mother and her allies founded the White Stags.”
“And to keep you quiet, she told you that a network that relied on secrecy and worked outside the law would have put you, your father, and Rives Shipping in danger.”
That threat kept Diana from breathing a word of it to anyone for years. “When my mother said the success of their mission hinged on me joining them, and that my destiny in life was to be more than an heiress and a society wife, I’d never been happier. I instantly forgave her abandonment.”
“Because she wanted you.”
“And because she needed me.”
Ian nodded empathetically. His family had conscripted him to defend their business. He must have borne a similar sense of obligation.
As horrible as it was, Diana liked that they shared something of such magnitude. “I haven’t been in the same room with her since she found me in Switzerland,” she admitted. “Widow usually communicates through notes orother agents.” Allegedly, for their safety and protection. Now Diana knew it was nothing but a cover for her mother’s deception and cowardice.
“Clearly, she came to Monte Carlo for the necklace.” Ian paused. “And yet she didn’t take it from you tonight.”
“I don’t know why.”
“She’s controlled you your entire life,” he murmured. “Perhaps she can’t fathom that you wouldn’t do what she commanded.”
The indignity of it made Diana cast her eyes to the elaborate carpet. The room must have cost a fortune. She wanted to figure out how Ian had swindled it, rather than deal with the mess of the evening. “After tonight, I know my mother betrayed me, and everyone who’s worked for our cause. I intend to take the Stags apart, brick by brick if I have to. Our work is too important to serve some vigilante agenda.”
For her entire adult life, the work of the White Stags had consumed her. It was an escape from the pretensions of thebeau mondeand her responsibilities as heir to a shipping empire. At her mother’s direction, she’d taken her wealth and her privilege and forged them into a weapon that she no longer knew how to wield.
And now, she felt catastrophically lonely in her mission.
