One insistent ghost. One befuddled barrister. One spinster who never thought becoming a medium could lead to her happily ever after.

Mary:
My father has been dead for three weeks, yet he insists on hovering at my elbow offering unsolicited opinions about my choice of walking paths. This, I have decided, is the cruelest part of grief — not the weeping, not the black crepe, but the fact that the person you are grieving will not stop talking. And now there is a strange barrister in my house who has destroyed a bell pull, frightened my aunt into her bedroom, and apparently considers himself a great help to me, a woman who has managed perfectly well on her own, thank you. Father thinks I should give him a chance. Father also thought the rose bushes needed pruning in November, so I have learned to take his opinions with some skepticism.

Hartwell:
I am a perfectly rational man. I do not believe in ghosts. I believe in evidence, in logic, in the orderly progression of facts toward a reasonable conclusion — which is why I cannot explain why, when Miss Mary Trentwood turned to speak to someone who was absolutely not there, I stepped closer instead of further away. I came to Compton Beauchamp to investigate a blackmail scheme. I did not come to develop an inconvenient interest in a woman who talks to thin air, or seriously consider that thin air might be talking back. And yet. Here I am.