Heart and Soul (31 page)

AN ETHICAL DILEMMA

The problem, Captain Corridon thought, was that
Hettie was so very beautiful. And stubborn. Both combined to make her bewilderingly enticing and strangely infuriating.

Right then, he was confronting both aspects simultaneously. Hettie Perigord had appeared at his lodgings late that night, carrying a wicker suitcase that, by her own admission, contained two changes of clothing, some clean underwear and a wax doll with realistic hair and closing eyes, which, for some bewildering reason, went by the name of Mrs. Beddlington.

Mrs. Beddlington was apparently possessed of a vast wardrobe which, for reasons quite beyond Captain Corridon’s grasp of the situation, had been left at the Perigord home, and about which Hettie—who as far as he could determine had left the home without so much as leaving a note for her father and mother—wished to send her mother a note.

Captain Corridon did not tell Miss Perigord that such a note was impossible. Leading her parents to know she had eloped—as she believed—and eloped of her own free will, would make Captain Corridon’s threats far less credible, and less likely to bring about a confession of their part in what must be a gigantic, world-bestriding conspiracy.

Instead, he rang the bell and had his subaltern bring him two pens and several sheets of paper. Some of this paper and one of the pens he pushed in Miss Perigord’s direction, and let her pen her own note to her mother, and carefully address it.

While Miss Perigord was thus occupied, Corridon took his own sheet of paper and wrote two notes to his immediate superiors. One of them was for General Boxter, who was in charge of the regular Red Coats. Because the general knew that he only had partial claim on Captain Corridon’s considerable ability and reasoning power, this was an easy note to write.

Dear General Boxter,
it read, in Captain Corridon’s broad and confident hand.
As you know, there are, at times, occasions when I must leave the regiment in order to fulfill my greater duty to Her Majesty the Queen. You will be advised when I shall return.
He folded and sealed the paper, and set it aside while Miss Perigord was still frowning over her sheet of paper, now crossing out a word and writing another.

The next letter was somewhat more difficult, as it must be addressed to Lord Rompworth, the current leader of the Secret Service and Magical Affairs in the government of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. He frowned over this one a moment, because he must convey enough that Rompworth wouldn’t think that Corridon had gone off on a wild-goose chase, but at the same time be sure he didn’t say so much that Rompworth would raise the hare of Corridon’s own hunting.

After all, if Corridon was right—and more and more he thought he was, and Hettie’s half-sobbed confidences only encouraged him to believe this more—then this might be the most vast of treasonable consipracies, and the man who brought it out into the open would surely earn honors that would dwarf every other honor that any other king had bestowed on a faithful servitor.

Corridon tore himself from a happy vision of himself installed as Adrian Corridon, lord of something or other, in possession of vast domains. For some reason, the image came with an image of Hettie as duchess of something or other and caused him to bite his lower lip in deep thought.

Hettie was devilishly pretty, intelligent and spirited, too. He would not turn up his nose at her and, after all, he knew for an almost absolute fact that her father was an earl. Which meant…Which meant, of course, that she was quite within his sphere, though she might be a little beneath it when he ascended to ducal dignities.

Which was why he must take her with him on that climb, and make her his duchess, he thought as he looked at her beautiful countenance bent over the writing paper.

Adrian Corridon had very few illusions about himself. He knew exactly what he was. He was the second son of a peer, with modest resources and probably not much future except what he could earn by the force of his brain and his decision. He also knew that the reason he was so well suited to the Secret Service and had a great many exploits, in missions all over the world, was that he was possessed of a certain…moral flexibility.

Oh, he believed in Mother England, and in the queen. He thought that, by and large, English civilization had improved every place in the world that it had touched, and brought a better life to millions of benighted natives.

There were, of course, some perfectly disgusting episodes in that history—what had happened in India in the aftermath of the were riots; the Chinese Opium Wars, in which England had more or less pushed opium on the natives and told them they did not have the right to close their country to the corruption and destruction brought by the pernicious drug. And there had been others. His mind glossed over minor difficulties with Russia and some rather decided confusion in Africa.

But, when everything was considered, the influence of English culture on the world was to leave the natives more prosperous—Captain Corridon believed—which, being a man in whom the carnal sense was foremost, he identified with leaving them markedly happy.

He also believed that Queen Victoria, for all her strange quirks and almost unbending morality of a decidedly traditional aspect, had been a boon for England. No one wanted to return to the bad old days of the regency, or even to endure the whims of Queen Victoria’s uncles.

No, it was all for the best that Victoria sat on the throne of England, and that England stood astride the world. He very much approved of this arrangement. And if getting those demmed jewels for the queen would prevent the revolutions and confusion that had so strongly marred the last century, why, Corridon was all for that, too.

No one in his right mind, no matter how ardent his republican partisanship, could have approved of the horrible excesses of the French Revolution. Let alone all the heads chopped on the guillotine—those of noblemen and prosperous commoners alike. There was a sort of madness that could possess a state, when all of a sudden they thought it was not only right and just to tamper with such things as the names of the days of the week, or even the divisions of the year, but also sought to regulate not only the way in which people lived—which some might argue was a legitimate function of the state—but also the way they thought and felt. And that, Captain Corridon thought, was one step too far, and no good ever could have come of it. Which was why he was quite enthusiastic in his idea that he should get those rubies and give them to the most trustworthy government, run by the most sensible queen in the whole world.

But what he didn’t need to do, and his principles would most definitely let him wink on this, was turn Hettie’s parents in to the wolf. After all, he thought, it was quite possible that in the end of all this, when the rubies were safely with the sovereign and Nigel Oldhall had been shot as a traitor, and all the various natives and various traitors had been punished, he should wish to marry Hettie Perigord, after all.

So, with this in mind, it would behoove him to protect his future in-laws by not mentioning them in this missive.

Which was why his message to his superior, as finally drafted, read:
Dear Lord Rompworth, as you know, I have for some time now been in pursuit of the rubies that anchor the power of the universe to the eyes of an avatar in deep Africa. It will not come as a surprise to you that these rubies are no longer in Africa—this is widely known in diplomatic circles. Heart of Light, the ruby that remained behind after Charlemagne used Soul of Fire to create power with which to bind the magic of Europe to himself and his descendants, was taken by the agent Nigel Oldhall, who had been sent to Africa by Her Majesty’s government and your superior, Lord Widefield.

We don’t know what happened in Africa, but considering that Nigel Oldhall left it in the company of Peter Farewell, whose anarchist past is in little dispute, this leads one to believe that Oldhall was, as the parlance goes, turned. This left us with the unpalatable option of trying to find Farewell in India, where he appeared to be in search of the other ruby—the one that was spent and more or less destroyed, Soul of Fire.

That he found this ruby and somehow restored it will not surprise you, but it might shock you to know—as per my dispatch of a week ago—that the second ruby had been given to Nigel Oldhall, either in Vienna, Austria or in Venice—our contacts were quite shaky on that—and that he then proceeded to take both rubies aboard a carpetship headed for Africa. Through my contacts, and with a little of instigation on my part, this carpetship was attacked by a man named Zhang—actually, a were-dragon who is part of the broad group of flying junk pirates—a menace that we must eliminate when he is no longer necessary.

I gave Zhang instructions on where to find the rubies and the description of the man who would be carrying them. With native inefficiency, I regret to say, not only did Zhang steal only one of the jewels, but did it in such a way that the entire ship was, in fact, at risk of crashing and losing many innocent lives.

Nigel Oldhall—for I am convinced it was him—held the ship in the air by main force of will. This man, Nigel, was brought to a private home in Cape Town, the home of a citizen who cannot possibly know what Oldhall is.
Here, Captain Corridon stopped and chewed on his pen, while he made sure he had been coy enough not to give away anything of importance. Then he took a deep breath and continued.
From this home, I am reliably informed, said Nigel Oldhall has left, headed for Hong Kong, possibly in the company of a were-dragon also a member of the flying junk pirates and, apparently, considered a princess among them.

I am now doing my duty and following these notorious and dangerous obstacles in the path to the fulfillment of Her Majesty’s orders.

I have in my possession an object that gives me a certain power over these desperate criminals.
This was, of course, not strictly true. To begin with, no one would call Hettie an object. Second, he didn’t exactly have something that gave him power over the people who’d taken the jewels. What he had was someone who had given him power over Joe Perigord, and he was sure this would be enough to leverage Perigord’s cooperation and betrayal of all the other conspirators. Corridon chewed his lower lip, and nodded, deciding it would have to do.
I will now leave in pursuit of these said criminals, and will return to you, hopefully soon, in possession of the rubies as well as signed confessions.

Rereading it, he was proud of the upbeat and confident tone of the ending, and nodded to himself in contented approval. Nothing remained for him now but to make sure that Hettie’s letter didn’t reach her mother and give Mrs. Perigord quite a wrong idea of what was transpiring.

On this thought, he sealed his own note, and wrote Lord Rompworth’s name upon the outside. Then he looked up and asked Hettie, who was slowly and pensively folding her own note, “Quite done, my love?”

When she nodded, he smiled. “Let me take the note, then, and give it to one of my own subalterns, to make sure it reaches your mother in time and that she will take good care of…er…Mrs. Beddlington’s wardrobe.”

His intention, of course, once in possession of the folded paper written in Miss Perigord’s emotion-shaken hand, was to feed it into the first fire he found burning.

He had to go quite a long while to find it, because, it being quite warm in Cape Town, the only fires currently burning were cooking fires. However, he wasn’t willing to risk a subaltern finding the addressed note and deciding to take it to the Perigord’s home.

For just a moment, as he came back into the room, he looked at Hettie, who was sitting very still, looking flushed and…well…odd, and wondered if perhaps she had read his letters.

But the wafers he had used to seal the missives remained still quite attached, and Corridon, who had had his share of relationships, was well aware that it was the unbreakable code of British misses not to read letters that weren’t meant for them.

Whatever else Hettie Perigord might be—dangerously beautiful or more stubborn than several varieties of mule—one thing he knew for absolute certainty: she was a well-brought-up English miss, and one who would not so easily break the code she’d been taught.

He bowed to her, as he picked up his jacket. “Shall we go?” he said, intending to give his own notes to his subaltern on the way out.

“You have not packed,” she said.

“I am used to traveling light,” he replied, with a dazzling smile.