Why Earls Fall in Love by Manda Collins

to imagine him there it would surely have been as I’d seen him, wouldn’t it? I could hardly remember him in a way I hadn’t seen him.”
    “The mind is quite good at tricking us into all manner of things,” Con said. “But, no, I don’t think you’d remember him in a way you’d never seen him. Of course, it might have been some stranger down there who you then imagined to be your husband since you’d been thinking of him moments before.”
    “But I wasn’t,” she protested. “I was thinking of … other things.”
    Interesting, he thought, tucking away that tidbit for later. “Whoever it was, he had no business loitering in my aunt’s back garden like that. I’ll go take a look at the spot when we return from our walk.”
    “Oh, do not go to any trouble,” Georgina said vehemently. “I do not wish to impose upon you with my foolish imaginings. It’s the reason I told no one what happened. Not only do I feel like a flibbertigibbet, but I also did not wish to worry anybody.”
    “Mrs. Mowbray,” he said firmly, “you are as far from being a flibbertigibbet as any lady I’ve ever met. And I really must insist upon checking out the scene for myself. If this man was indeed standing back there last night, then I need to know who he was and what he was doing back there. Not only for your sake but for my aunt’s as well.”
    He felt her deflate a bit beside him. “Oh, I suppose,” she said with a slight sigh of resignation. “Though I do hope you won’t tell anyone else. Your cousins and their wives already think I am out of place in your aunt’s house. Goodness knows what they will say if they hear I’ve been imagining my dead husband.”
    “You leave my cousins and their spouses to me,” Con said, grateful to have an excuse to speak to the others. He’d been none too pleased with the way they treated her last evening, and now he could tell them to leave her be with good reason.
    *   *   *
    By the time the party reached Farley Castle, with its crumbling walls and towers rising into the sky, it was lunchtime, and their walk having given them all an appetite, the party made short work of the baskets of food Lady Russell’s cook had made for them.
    “It really is lovely, isn’t it?” Lydia asked as she waited for her cousin James to finish peeling her apple. “I’ve never been very interested in old estates and the like, but even I can admit that the ivy growing over the gatehouse is quite picturesque.”
    Con, who had finished his lunch and taken up his charcoal and sketchbook, looked up from his work. “I am glad to hear you say it, Cousin, for I’d begun to fear there was nothing in that pretty head of yours but silliness.”
    “You needn’t tease, Con,” she responded with a frown. “Not all ladies can be as serious as Mrs. Mowbray.”
    Georgina had been packing their lunch things back into the basket they’d carried them in, but at Lydia’s words she looked up. “Oh, I am not so serious as all that,” she responded to the younger lady. “I simply do what I must to ensure that my behavior does not reflect poorly upon your aunt Russell.”
    Before Lydia could respond, Georgie saw Con exchange a look with James, who handed the peeled apple to Lydia and rose from the blanket they were seated upon. “Let’s go take a look at the tower, Lyd,” the younger man said, reaching a hand down to help her up. Georgie expected the girl to protest, but she allowed him to pull her up.
    “My aunt isn’t here now, Mrs. Mowbray,” Lydia said, tucking her arm into James’s and turning to walk with him in the direction of the far tower.
    “I hope you will not refine upon Lydia’s teasing, Mrs. Mowbray,” Philip said from the same blanket that Lydia and James had just abandoned. “She is still quite young.”
    Looking at the way the young man sprawled back on the picnic blanket, one ankle crossed over the other, at his ease in that way only young men could manage, she would have