11 - Ticket to Oblivion Read Online Free Page A

air that was much more at home in Burnhope Manor than in the cloistered world of the Oxford college where Vaughan had been a fellow at the time. While one sister would surely have rejected his proposal of marriage, the other had accepted it with muted pleasure and been – in the early years – exactly the sort of spouse he’d envisaged as his preferred partner in life.
    Motherhood had wrought a profound change in both sisters. The arrival of Imogen, an only child, turned the serene Paulina into a nervous, ever-watchful chaperone,determined to protect her daughter from what she perceived as the rampant wickedness of the outside world. Cassandra, too, had undergone a kind of metamorphosis. Having given birth to three children, she’d become more strident, more assertive and less ready to accept her husband’s decisions without first questioning them. Since he hated confrontation of any kind, Vaughan had given ground to her time and again. Even though he now enjoyed the elevated status of being Master of University – the oldest college endowment in Oxford – he lacked authority on the domestic front. Cassandra was always prone to challenge his judgement and advance her own plausible alternatives to his plans. Everyone at the college was aware of the marital imbalance in the Master’s Lodging. It had led to waspish comments from his detractors in the Senior Common Room.
    ‘Don’t just sit there, Dominic,’ she complained. ‘Do something.’
    ‘What am I supposed to do, my love?’
    ‘Anything is better than hiding away in your study.’
    ‘I need to check these accounts from the bursar.’
    ‘Heavens!’ she exclaimed. ‘Must the safety of our niece take second place to the erratic mathematics of the bursar? Don’t you
care
about Imogen?’
    ‘I care a great deal, Cassandra,’ he said, rising from his desk, ‘and I’ve already been to the chapel to pray for her deliverance. But, in practical terms, all that was needful has already been done by your good self. You promptly set the wheels of the investigation in motion and I applaud you for that.’
    ‘Somebody had to do so,’ she snorted.
    ‘Are you insinuating that I would have failed to do likewise?’
    ‘Frankly, I am.’
    ‘That’s unjust of you.’
    ‘Is it? You couldn’t even be bothered to meet Imogen at the station.’
    ‘You and Emma formed a perfectly adequate welcoming party.’
    ‘Your presence would have given it more body and you’d have been able to remonstrate with the stationmaster and the driver of the locomotive. In your absence, I had to tackle them both.’
    ‘I don’t see that either of them could be blamed,’ he said, reasonably. ‘If you set on them, they have my sympathy. You can be unnecessarily sharp at times, my dear. I’ve mentioned it to you before.’
    ‘You’re doing it again!’ she protested. ‘You’re worrying about two mere railway employees instead of about your niece. What if she’s been killed or kidnapped? What if Imogen has been
ravished
? Supposing,’ she continued, voice soaring a whole octave, ‘that it had been Emma who boarded that train then disappeared? Wouldn’t
that
have engaged your attention?’
    ‘You know quite well that it would, Cassandra. You chastise me unfairly. I have the greatest concern for Imogen – and for her maid, of course. It’s a shared plight and we must remember that. But having no idea what happened to them, I’m determined not to fall prey to the wild imaginings that you have just listed. Let me finish,’ he went on quickly as she was about to speak. ‘All that we can realistically do is to watch, pray and rely on the goodness of our Creator. The situation may look baffling but there may well be a perfectly logical explanation.’
    ‘That is patently untrue.’
    ‘We must never surrender to despair.’
    She rolled her eyes. ‘Your words push me perilously close to it.’
    ‘That’s unkind and unwarranted, Cassandra.’
    She had the grace to look