Every seven years, an important thing, like scent, disappears from the town of Sterling and Aila, sixteen, is determined to find the cause and how her recently-deceased mother was involved.

Fifteen-year-old Miss Penelope Lumley, a governess trained at the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, takes the three Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place to London, England, and learns they are under a curse.