“It’s not that easy.”

“Isn’t it?” She came to stand before him, calmly pinning her hair. “Tell me what you’ve been doing since this accident.”

“Doing? I don’t know. I suppose I’ve been drinking. Trying to forget—”

“You’ve been wallowing in a sea of self-pity. That is your grossest error.”

Chase didn’t know what to say. She looked so damnably sure of herself. He envied her in that moment, envied her calm certainty about life, her intrepid spirit, her refusal to let life sour her spirits. He wondered how he’d been so fortunate as to have met her. “You, Harriet Ward, are an exceptional woman.”

Color flooded her cheeks. “I’m nothing special,” she said gruffly.

“Really? Do you not run this entire estate all by yourself?”

She laughed, the light slanting over her sparkling eyes. “No. Garrett Park is run by committee. Derrick is in charge of household repairs. He’s very talented at tinkering with things. Stephen is in charge of keeping up the stables. He’s always been good with horses, though we had to sell most of them three years ago.”

“What a pity.”

“Yes, Stephen was devastated, though he refused to admit it.”

“What do your sisters do?”

“Sophia helps with the books. She’s almost as good at figures as she is at playwriting.” A faint smile softened the line of Harriet’s mouth. “Better, in fact, though I’d never tell her that.”

“And your mother?”

“Who do you think sees to it that we all have fresh linens every week? That the meat is cooked well and the floors always scrubbed? She makes sure there is enough so that we can eat through the winter, and she spoils us with clothes that she herself sews.”

When he stopped to think about it, it was amazing how this family, left in near poverty and distress, had banded together to make a success out of their seemingly dire straits. But he supposed he understood that concept—in a way, his brothers were never closer than when facing adversity. “What does the intrepid Ophelia do?”

“She sees to it that we are not remiss in our attention to our neighbors.”

He frowned. After hearing of the contributions of the others, that seemed far less than important.

His thoughts must have been evident on his face, for Harriet sent him a sharp frown. “Ophelia spends a good portion of every year helping Cook with the herbs. She also makes Christmas gifts for our neighbors. She does far more than her fair share.”

“Gifts? Why bother with gifts?”

She turned to fix a gimlet stare on his face. “Neighbors, Mr. St. John, are important to us all. When our plow horse strained her foreleg in the midst of spring plowing, our neighbor to the west, Baron Whitfield, sent one of his horses to take her place. When Ophelia became ill and we needed medicine, but were unable to get to town because it had snowed so deeply that our poor farm mare could not make it out the drive, Mr. Nash came to our aid. He made the trip to town himself, wrapped head to foot in wool and riding in an old farmer’s cart to cut through the roads.”