523
Audrey sat by the window, having finished the letter, which was much shorter than usual. Worry filled her face.
She prepared pen and paper to reply, but even after thinking for a long time, she did not know how to begin.
Susie, who sat by her feet, pawed at the newspaper spread across the floor. Keenly noticing the change in Audrey's mood, she asked with concern:
"Audrey, are you all right?"
Miss Hall slowly lowered the letter, pressed her lips together, and spoke worriedly:
"I'm fine, Susie. It's just..."
Audrey sounded a little downcast. "I'm a little worried about Alfred."
The letter and envelope on the desk were far too plain for correspondence from an earl's family. They consisted of commonplace white paper and an ordinary brown envelope, rather than stationery bearing the family's designs. Even the sealing wax bore no family crest.
Yet she distinctly remembered that Alfred, who often wrote home, prepared plenty of the special stationery commissioned by the family, making it convenient to send his letters straight to the postman serving the Hall Family. Given how many letters he had sent so far, he could not possibly have run out.
What unsettled her even more was that, on closer inspection, there were faint dark-red stains on the paper and envelope... Assuming the worst, Audrey made a gesture with her hand and realized that these were probably marks left by the hand holding the pen as it brushed across the white paper while he wrote.
Every sign indicated that Alfred's current situation was bad-perhaps very bad.
*The fighting began on the Southern Continent, and the colonies are the front lines. Fierce warfare has already begun, but because it won't reach Loen itself anytime soon, I haven't paid much attention to it. Even most people here at