If anything, he had seemed nonchalant about helping and even a bit boastful about being able to decode the letter.
Now, Sebastian looked over the missive, picking out certain lines that would be helpful.
There has been a shady figure making more waves in the ton, but nobody knows which society…
He calls himself the Betula. I know of no one who bears that moniker other than this man.
… I have tried to seek him out, but he is not a gambling man, or if he is, he keeps his movements guarded…
Feeding info through his connections. There are many who correspond with the Betula, but none dare call him by any other name…
Debts are owed. People are frightened. Something must be done.
Sebastian grabbed his quill once more and drew a thick, bold line underneath that last phrase.
Something must be done.
While he had done a variety of jobs for the Crown in the past, his present work, with Colonel Learmonth, involved tracking a band of criminals throughout the country who were reportedly feeding information to a ruthless group of traitors.
At first, he had imagined this Betula was a French citizen or perhaps an English gentleman who was sympathetic to the French cause. But then, upon gaining further insight by a follow-up letter, Sebastian was led on a wild goose chase to the north of England. There, he interviewed a woman whose husband was rumored to be part of the Betula organization.
Both the lady of the house and her husband had claimed to know nothing, and Sebastain had left Derbyshire feeling more discontent than ever.
Those same feelings rankled inside of him again.
I have put this off for too long. I should not have allowed myself to become distracted. This Betula has had plenty of time to slip out of England and return to France.
Sebastian stabbed the nib of his pen onto the parchment.
I do not know he is in France. Why do I insist on exploring that same tired line of thinking?
Annoyed, mostly with himself, Sebastian focused once more on the documents provided to him in the case file. Learmonth had sent more than one letter, and alongside those scraps of correspondence there was a long list of complied notes. Some of the ink became smudged during mailing, faded over time, or was worn from Sebastian handling the documents himself.
It was all still legible, mercifully, and Sebastian, after having pored over these for too many weeks these past months, came back to them with fresh eyes.
Betula…
“Heavens,” Sebastian muttered to himself. He stood abruptly, pushed away from the desk, and sauntered toward the fireplace. It was not an exceedingly chilly afternoon, so the fire burned low in the grate. He stared at the flames while saying the code name aloud.
“Betula… Betula…” He allowed the word to trip off his tongue. “What does Betula mean?”
There were not many books collected in this secluded study but Sebastian did keep some translation guides on hand. He could not always rely on Percy to do the difficult decoding for him.Sebastian, inspired to learn the origins of the word “Betula”, strode toward the shelf. He pulled a worn copy of a French dictionary from the bookcase and turned it over in his hand.
French… Betula… Could it be a name? A place?
When Sebastian had been a young gentleman, he had rather enjoyed sitting through French lessons. The way the tongue flicked over each syllable charmed him in a unique fashion and he had taken to learning enough of it to speak the language conversationally. His accent was not what it should be, but that did not matter much.
Betula…
Sebastian decided that Betula was likely not a French term, so he replaced the book on the shelf and ran his index finger over the other massive tomes.
Latin?
While Sebastian admired the French and Italian tongues, other European languages sounded rough, and Latin had always sounded…morose, to Sebastian.
No. Betula is not to be found by reading Latin.
Frustrated, Sebastian turned away from his bookshelf altogether. His eyes fell immediately on the stack of shuffled documents.
