The soaring windows shone in the distance, floating dust motes visible in the wide stream of morning sunlight. He had been missing some days after the departures of Gorgon and the Royalist Army, but had returned just the day before. The countess had objected to his presence, but Thomas simply avoided her, knowing she was essentially powerless at the present time. She was in the chapel tower now, probably on the second floor, which she preferred because it was near her rooms. Quiet dominated, accentuating the tap of our measured footsteps along the wide, stone corridor.Thomas had changed markedly. He now wore elegant clothes of current style and color, where I had previously only known him to wear worn, old-fashioned dress. Today, it was a flamboyant white satin shirt with full sleeves and turned-back cuffs under a black, partially buttoned jerkin, and matching pants. His blossoming attitudes, now rich and outlandish, had before been restricted, though ambitious and generally bitter as a necessity of his blighted existence.“I have been here all along, you know,”
