Floote looked grave and very much the butler. He was ostensibly Lady Maccon’s personal secretary and librarian now but had never been one to let go of good training. “It is a unique solution, madam.”

“And?”

“You have always done things differently, madam.”

“Will it work?”

“Anything is possible, madam,” was Floote’s noncommittal answer. Very diplomatic was Floote.

It was well into the night and no longer quite the time for social calls, even among the supernatural set, when Lord Akeldama’s doorbell sounded, interrupting Alexia’s conversation and the drone’s bustling.

Emmet Wilberforce Bootbottle-Fipps—whom everyone, including Lady Maccon when she forgot herself, called Boots—trotted off in a flutter of green velvet frock coat to see who would call at such an hour. Lord Akeldama didn’t always keep a butler; he said his drones needed the practice. Whatever that meant.

Alexia thought of something she had better see dealt with before it slipped her mind and became inconvenient. “Floote, would you please see about some very discreet carpenters to build a bridge between the balconies?”

“Madam?”

“I realize that they are hardly more than a yard apart, but my stability is not what it once was. It seems likely we must persist in this charade of actually living in the one abode while sneaking into the other. I refuse to be hurled willy-nilly between houses, no matter how strong my husband or how diverting he would find the attempt. Clothing isn’t always enough of a barrier to preternatural contact, and I should hate to be the victim of unreliable catching, if you take my meaning.”

“Perfectly, madam. I shall see to the builders directly.” Floote kept a remarkably straight face for a man having heard such a preposterous statement come out of the mouth of an overly pregnant aristocrat.

Boots reappeared wearing a look of mild shock under his sculpted topiary of muttonchops. “The caller is for you, Lady Maccon.”

“Yes?” Alexia held out her hand for a card.

There was none forthcoming, only Boots’s shocked statement. “It is a lady, what!”

“They do happen, Boots, much as you would prefer to deny it.”

“Oh, no, sorry ’bout that. I mean to say, how’d she know you were here?”

“Well, if you told me which lady, I might be able to elucidate.”

“It’s a Miss Loontwill, Lady Maccon.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks. Which one?”

Miss Felicity Loontwill sat in Lord Akeldama’s drawing room in a dress of sensible heathered tweed with only one layer of trim and six buttons, a hat with minimal feathers, and a gray knit shawl with a ruffled collar.

“Oh, my heavens,” exclaimed Lady Maccon upon seeing her sister in such a state. “Felicity, are you quite all right?”

Miss Loontwill looked up. “Why, yes, of course, sister. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Is there something amiss with the family?”

“You mean, aside from Mama’s predilection for pink?”

Alexia, blinking in flabbergasted shock, lowered herself carefully onto a chair. “But, Felicity, you are wearing last season’s dress!” She lowered her voice, in genuine fear that her sister might be deranged. “And knitwear.”