Streaks of cloud still lingered overhead, but the determined rain of the past three days seemed temporarily to have abated. The clock above the archway to the chapel and library staircase showed it to be just gone half past eight; the college felt ominously quiet. I paused to look up at the windows of the rector’s lodgings, wondering which room might be Sophia’s and how I might find a way to see her again today, despite her father’s explicit ban, when I remembered with a sudden curse that I had half promised to go hunting with Sidney and the palatine Laski at Shotover Forest. I decided that I would walk over to Christ Church and excuse myself to Sidney in person. Sidney would be angry, I knew, and I had every sympathy for him, being saddled with the Pole from dawn till night, but I could hardly be considered an asset to any hunting party even when my attention was not so distracted by trying to catch a killer; I had no talent for gentlemen’s sports and no opportunity to learn them in my youth, as he had.
