After the ugly work at the cemetery, Betsy sat on a metal folding chair and looked at the raw earth covering the gorgeous urn she’d paid so much money for, that contained all that was left of her beloved sister. Everyone else had gone now, gone to eat and drink and be glad it wasn’t they who were reduced to ashes and buried deep underground.

She couldn’t stay here, not in a town that turned a funeral into a joke followed by a party.

But what was she going to do? Where was she going to go?

She sat so long that her joints stiffened. It was hard to rise from the chair, and her knees were so stiff she nearly fell making her way to the narrow dirt lane that wound around the hill and down to the street, down which she stumbled, back to the empty apartment, there to fall across her bed and descend immediately into sleep.

Hudson Earlie stood beside the coffee urn, cup and saucer in hand, watching the crowd. Big turnout, which was to be expected, of course. And it had gotten cheerful, as these things tended to do. He hadn’t seen the grieving sister, though. Not a bad-looking woman, if you liked them with a little meat on their bones, which he did when no one was looking. She had some intelligence and sophistication to her, too, which he also liked occasionally.

But she was too old, only five or six years younger than he was. He had a strict rule that the women in his string not be older than thirty-five.

Which was too bad in this case, as this one might be the sole heir of her sister’s estate, which he knew was considerable.

“Hud, whatever are you thinking about?” said a voice beside him.

“Me? Thinking? You know me better than that,” he jested quickly, grinning at Shelly Donohue.

“Seriously,” she said.

“I was thinking how the museum would miss Margot. She was on the board, you know, and she brought some good, businesslike attitudes with her to meetings. And I liked her myself—” He had to stop and swallow. That surprised him, and he took a sip of his coffee to clear his throat. “She was a hardworking, capable woman,” he concluded.

Shelly nodded. “Yes, she was a terrific friend as well as a good boss. I loved working in her shop. That reading at the funeral had me bawling like a little kid, the one about wool and flax and dressing her servants in scarlet when winter comes. That’s from Proverbs, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I thought Proverbs was all one-liners of advice, like fortune cookies. But that was a long one. And it described Margot so well! Even about the sashes—did you get that?”

“Yes, it came up at Christopher Inn the other night.”

They’d held a Founders’ Day parade last year, and Margot had helped with costumes. One thing she had done was make sashes for the people who were playing founder George Bertram, and the Reverend Charles Gilpin, and schoolmistress Jane Wolcott, so people would know who they were.