He stopped, because Elizabeth was shaking her head. “No,” she said. Her blue eyes were bright with tears. “I would if I could, but another has already used this device to attempt just such a change. He went about his work too subtly, we think.”
Viktor looked at her, puzzled and distracted from his tirade.
“A man of broad shoulders and brown eyes,” William said, “an Englishman by his speech, who would have attempted to dissuade you from your course of study at Ingolstadt.”
Viktor could not recall him. “There were many such, my course of study being the very opposite of orthodox.”
“Or perhaps you remember a man of that description staying with your family in Geneva?”
Viktor tried to cast his mind back. “Stay, I do remember such a visitor to my father. He was a great researcher into natu
