Just then, Darlington House began to clatter and creak. Cecilia abandoned thoughts of the brooch. Closing her parasol, slipping Cathy’s ghost away into her purse, she stepped up to the door, opened it, and walked through. She had barely made it into the hall when the house began rising.

“Good heavens,” Cecilia murmured with surprise at such precipitousness. She glanced at the plasterwork ceiling with its ornate rose, on the other side of which she knew her aunt would be standing at the wheel, feet apart and hairpins erect as she guided her domicile up over Bath.

“Aereo rapido!”

Miss Darlington’s voice echoed through the house. A large oil portrait of Beryl Black, hanging on the foyer’s east wall, suddenly went askew. Darlington House was banking so sharply, the stabilizing magic faltered.

Cecilia grasped a nearby console table to no avail: the table and its cargo of mail, stacked on a tray, slid westerly, and she went with it. A vase of lilies fell shattering to the floor, and on a sideboard at the far side of the hall a heavy crystal bowl began edging perilously forward. Cecilia recalled that the bowl had previously belonged to the Duke of Kent (and strictly speaking still did) and that its value was in the hundreds of pounds. Letting go of the console table, tucking her parasol beneath her arm lest it open indoors and cause bad luck, Cecilia laid a hand against the wall for balance and began hauling herself up toward the sideboard as quickly as possible before the bowl toppled. The door swung before her and, grasping its handle, she tried to push it shut.

At that inopportune moment the house lurched, the doormat slid beneath her feet, and Cecilia staggered. She found herself tilting out the open door, saved from falling only by means of both hands around the door handle. With annoyance she watched as her parasol plummeted to the road below, where it shattered.

“Doors!” Miss Darlington shouted from somewhere on the first floor. Running footsteps echoed through the house; a door slammed shut. The building shook, and Bath’s rooftops seemed to sway beneath it. Cecilia feared the iced bun she’d eaten earlier might at any moment return to the city from whence it came. Footsteps sounded again, moving closer, and then Pleasance had her arms around Cecilia’s waist and was pulling her back from the doorway, into the safety of the hall.

“Good heavens, miss!” Pleasance cried, kicking the door shut. The house eased into a horizontal position once more. “I’m ever so sorry, it were all my fault! I was reading The Mysteries of Udolpho, and what with my weeping and gasping forgot to close the kitchen door.” She shook her head fretfully and curls sprung from their clips. “Because of me, you were about sent falling to your tragical death hundreds of feet below!”

“Not at all, my dear,” Cecilia replied, smiling with reassurance. “It was ninety feet at the most.”

She returned to the console table, avoiding lilies and the shattered vase as she did so. Taking up the envelope at the top of the mail stack, she considered its originating address with some interest.