The title derives from Classical dressage, in particular, the graceful Airs Above the Ground, the haute ecole movements for which special breeds of horses, in particular Lippizans, are highly trained.

Mary Stewart is known for raising the genre of romantic suspense novels to a higher and more educated level with a new kind (for the time) of intelligent heroine.

Having tea with her mother's schoolfriend Carmel Lacy at Harrods, she learns that Lewis, whom she believes to be in Stockholm on business, appears in a newsreel story about a circus fire in Austria.

Carmel, assuming Vanessa will be joining Lewis in Austria, asks her to accompany her seventeen-year-old son Timothy, who wants to visit his divorced father in Vienna.

The story is set against a backdrop of circus life, stolen goods, international smuggling, and an old mystery involving the disappearance of a famed Lipizzaner stallion and his groom.