Chapter 12 #2
In all his running around town and thinking of Lady Phoebe, he had forgotten the illness that struck him after he quaffed his cup that evening.
There had been a few frightening moments when he was certain that the mysterious fox-masked lady had dropped something into his drink, but then he had abandoned that idea entirely.
Lady Phoebe was not to blame. Surely not…
He replaced the bottle of brandy carefully on the corner of his desk and hastily opened the top drawer on the desk.
I must find something to take my mind off that lady.
Now that he had set Mrs. Vale on the task of learning more about Lady Phoebe’s background, Sebastian vowed that he would focus and concentrate on other matters…more important ones.
Without wasting another moment, Sebastian pulled out the documents he had been working on pertaining to his most recent mission for the Crown.
A letter had come from Colonel Learmonth several months ago, and Sebastian had been thrown into the mission with everything he had. He’d only let his focus slip these past couple of weeks. Still, guilt pierced him at the thought.
He knew his place in the world. He knew where his loyalties ought to lie. He served the Crown and no one else, no other person, place, or thing came before his King and Country.
Without that purpose grounding him, the Duke of Talwyn was just a man wearing a mask, prancing around ballrooms with no proper use for the skills he had. But Sebastian had to be useful.
He could not bear to sit idly and because he had a specific set of skills, it was his duty to use them to the best of his abilities in service of the Crown.
He looked over the encrypted letter from Colonel Learmonth. There were sections of it that had, at one time, been indecipherable. Luckily, upon first receiving this correspondence, Sebastian had persuaded Percy to translate the challenging bits.
Sebastian had been hesitant to go to his friend, weary of making him reminisce about their days working side-by-side, but Percy had taken it in stride, and remained unaffected.
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.
I should go back to the letters. Re-read everything. See if Learmonth could piece together who owed these great debts to Betula.
He stalked back to the leather chair and plunked down into it heavily, like a stone being dropped into a tin pail of water.
What if… An intrusive thought rose in his mind then. What if the criminal network knows I'm investigating them? What if they somehow found out I am not just the Duke of Talwyn but also the infamous Lord Spencer?
His mind thrummed with this new concept.
Someone who was working for this criminal enterprise could have found a way to infiltrate the masquerade. They could have slipped poison into my drink that night and…
He could not bear to let that thought ferment any further in his brain. When he contemplated all the malicious deeds that others committed, his mind swerved toward the horrors he and his compatriots had already endured.
Memories of Vincent being kidnapped two years ago made him shudder.
Vincent had been abducted. He vanished into thin air and Sebastian had been lucky that he had come back to London largely unscathed.
What if I hadn’t stumbled out to the garden that night and made myself bring the drink back up? Would something similar have happened to me?
After swallowing the whole of his drink, Sebastian was vulnerable. While he stumbled and wretched, anyone could have captured him. And he… Lord Spencer… the Duke of Talwyn… had been the one to afford his enemies such a chance.
All the guests at that soiree were hidden beneath masks. No one had given their real names at the door. Each room was cast in low candlelight, creating shadows where any sort of monster might lurk.
If someone wanted to hurt me, they would have been granted ample opportunities.
Then his thoughts homed in on his fox-masked lady.
Sebastian swore under his breath.
No, he told himself. You are tired and distracted by thoughts that do not belong in your head.
Lady Phoebe… Thisbe...
Stop letting your mind go idle. Focus, Talwyn. Focus.
Painstakingly, Sebastian lowered his head, shook it twice, and swore not to think of Lady Phoebe again until after he had devoted himself properly to his work.
For the next three-quarters of an hour, he pours over Learmonth’s letters and jotted notes on a long scroll of parchment. As he shifted his focus and studied the documents once more, he noticed a few names coming up several times.
Some were nicknames: the Songbird, Swing of the Dance, whatever that meant, and the Harrow.
All were too vague to even guess, but that was the point.
Sebastian could only assume they were more influential members of the association or frequent informants.
Perhaps they were the buyers of the information.
He studied the numbers, looking at how quickly debts were being paid off. One man’s sum, that made even Sebastian’s eyes widen, was paid off within a month. That was only something a very, very wealthy man could do, so it was clear the buyers and informants contained members of the gentry.
He found one piece of correspondence that had been intercepted by the Crown. It contained very little, other than a smooth introduction between a Lord Hummingbird and a Lord Redtree.
Sebastian snorted. The nicknames did indeed conceal the identities of these gentlemen, but he enjoyed the creativity.
Then he noticed one name that was not a play upon words or silly and unhelpful.
Lord Birchwood.
The document was dated only two months ago. He checked it once, then again, before deciding that he’d read it correctly initially.
Two months ago…What was Lord Birchwood doing two months ago?