Giles Fox is a middle-aged, libertarian Cambridge scholar, precise and pinched and exceedingly bitter that he is still not a Fellow of Kings His life's work - the transcript of a medieval tract on virginity - is aimed solely at the dons who failed to elect him The only other brightness in his life is his seventeen-year-old daughter, Tibba, who is busy devoting her life to him Like a stone dropped into a pool, plain and dowdy, the new research assistant, Miss Agar, is added to the household