The Pressure I Face

Count Boles's grief-stricken and earnest statement fell upon Charlotte's heart word by word, like heavy chunks of lead.

The reception room sank into a long silence. Only the occasional crackle of burning wood in the hearth and the faint birdsong drifting from afar beyond the window threw the nearly stagnant air inside into sharper relief.

Charlotte lowered her eyelids slightly, her gaze falling to her hands folded on her lap, the tips of her fingers a little pale.

The picture of hell on earth Boles had described—"starvation corpses everywhere, wild dogs gnawing at them, fields lying barren"—was something she had not witnessed with her own eyes, having lived deep within the manor for so long, but she was no pampered, fragile girl raised in ignorance behind inner walls.

She had served as cavalry captain in Fran City in the Northern Territory, had seen with her own eyes the wounds wrought by war and refugees driven from their homes; she had also heard, in fragments, of the misery back home from the servants and farmers in the manor who came from all over Herwenham—harsh taxes and levies, oppression by local strongmen, families torn apart...

It was just that she had never known the situation had deteriorated to such a shocking, blood-freezing degree!

A deep compassion and anger intertwined in her heart. She loved this country, loved the people who lived upon this land.

Thinking of those innocent people struggling on the line between life and death, her heart clenched again and again.

Count Boles's words had abruptly dragged her out of her relatively peaceful manor life and forced her to face Herwenham's bloody reality head-on.

However, supporting them with grain and gold coins was by no means a small matter.

This was not merely sympathy moved by the lips, but a