I’m about to whisper that we need to speak when voices waft from down the corridor. A man tells someone, “Stop that.”

“The rope chafes,” Emily snaps. “I wish it loosened.”

Nicolas’s head jerks up. When I slip beside him, his hand goes out to stop me, as if I were trying to get past.

I lean in to whisper my fears, which this exchange seems to confirm. Emily is a false captive, snapping at her captor to loosen her staged bonds.

“Why don’t I just remove it for you, your majesty?” the man says.

“That would be grand. Would you?”

The man snorts. “If you wished to be treated like his lordship’s niece, perhaps you ought to have remembered that before you betrayed him.”

“I did not betray him. He is behaving monstrously, and I will not sit by and watch it. He has put me here to teach me a lesson. The only lesson I am learning is that he is not the man I thought he was.”

Nicolas exhales, nodding as he realizes Emily is truly a prisoner, and we have not stepped into a trap. Yes, as a writer, I am suspicious, always imagining the twists one might add to a plot. The lord’s niece is a traitor! No, she is an ally! No, she is a traitor pretending to be an ally!

If I were writing this scene, I might indeed have Emily-the-traitor decry her imprisonment when the hero is within earshot, but my dialogue would be very different from what we just heard.

Emily is indeed a captive, and her reaction is not terror, as one might paint such a damsel, but annoyance and anger, and I credit her for that, even if I worry that she does not quite understand the severity of the situation. How could she? To her, she is indeed merely being taught a lesson.

Nicolas leans to my ear and whispers, “All is well, non?”

I glance at him. “You think she is faking captivity?”

“I do not now. I simply . . .” He looks around and then says again, “You do feel all is well, non?”

“Why do you hesitate?” a voice says behind me as Lord Thomas’s ghost hurries past. He turns to face us. “She is right there.”

“And she is fine,” I whisper. “Annoyed but not in immediate danger. We hesitate because we are uncertain.”

“Of what?” he says, voice rising. “My son is on his way. You do not have much time.”

I frown. “On his way?”

“Yes, I saw him. That is why I came down here. To urge you to hurry.”

Which he has been doing since I first met him.

Hurry, hurry, hurry. Do this. Don’t do that. Faster! Why do you hesitate?

That free-floating doubt finally solidifies. What is bothering me about all this? Not Emily. Lord Thomas.

Lord Thomas? Everyone says he is a good man. Nicolas may not have known him, but based on his reputation, he did not doubt his intentions.