And she was not about to give the jackanapes any quarter. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Well?”

He removed his hat and raked his hair from his eyes, then yanked his hand away and stared at it as if disgusted. “Bloody hell, now my hair will smell like—”

“Oh piffle! I don’t care what your hair smells like. Who are you?”

He replaced the hat, the brim shading his eyes. “It doesn’t really mat—”

“Your name, sir.”

His brow lowered as if he might challenge her. Harriet waited, eyes narrowed. If he thought to withhold such information now, he was sadly mistaken.

She wasn’t sure what she’d do if he refused, but there would be hell to pay, make no doubt.

Some of her thoughts must have shown on her face, for he exploded into a sigh. “You’re determined about this, aren’t you?”

“I deserve to know what manner of man we’ve been housing.”

“Yes. I suppose you do at that. Very well. My name is Chase St. John.”

Harriet’s finger itched, right at the band of that silly stuck ring. She absently rubbed it. He said the name as if it should mean something. Harriet tried to remember if there were any St. Johns about, but none came to mind. “I don’t know of your family. Where exactly do they live?”

“We have homes in London, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Devonshire, Strat—”

She laughed then. Of course the man who stood before her, smelling of sheep ointment and wearing her brother’s old clothes, had houses in all those places. “So many homes! Goodness, how do you manage to keep them all up?”

He shrugged as if he had never really considered the question. “Servants, I suppose.”

Her amusement faded before his casual shrug. “You suppose?” He was serious. She swallowed. “How many servants do you have?”

“I don’t know.”

“How could you not know?”

“I just haven’t thought about it.” He leaned against the wagon, neatly crossing his booted feet at the ankles. “Servants just…are.”

Harriet thought of her own servants, four in all, and of the way she’d struggled to find just one more set of hands for the shearing. Yet here before her stood a man who had so many servants, he wasn’t really sure of the number.

The thought rankled. “They just are. How very nice for you. So you’re chock-full of houses and servants. I daresay you’re also related to the King.”

“As a matter of fact, we are.”

Of course they were. Harriet’s stomach tightened. He wasn’t just wealthy, he was one of the wealthy. The man was not of her world, never had been, and never would be.

Harriet knew many things about life. She’d been on her own far too long not to have garnered a few bits of wisdom here and there. Her laughing, smiling father, who teased and joked and never seemed at a loss, had left his family with mounds of debt and nothing else. All from trying to be what he was not.