Jean Loftus has lived at Ashe House for more than 40 years. Its tidy contours, the soft colors of the garden, speak to an orderly, gracious, supremely English life. But when workmen unearth a skeleton from that garden, the skeletons from Jean's past begin rising to the surface. The life they speak of?a childhood in Revolutionary Russia, chaotic years as a refugee between the two world wars?was neither orderly nor English. Zita Daunsey, Jean's neighbor in this cozy Sussex town, would like to help Jean protect her secrets. But this task is made more difficult with the sudden arrival of a mysterious, aggressively inquisitive Russian student. What aging sin is Jean so anxious to conceal? And at what point does Zita become an accomplice to it?