"I don't know how to do anything," he said flatly.
And Charlotte understood it as the truest sentence spoken in that cottage in years.
"No," she agreed. "You don't. And in six months, one of us is going to have to stand in front of four hundred people who do know how to do things, and it isn't going to be me."
The winter that followed was, by every account Charlotte gave afterward, the best and worst season of that marriage simultaneously. Because it worked, and working was precisely the difficulty nobody had predicted.
Edmund ruined an entire row of turnips in October, pulling the crop instead of the weeds. Young Danny laughed outright before going pale with worry, but Edmund only said he was entirely right to laugh, and moved on to the next row. That was the moment Danny stopped being afraid of him.
Old Silas took longer. He'd gone quiet for two full days after the wedding, certain that a man of quality moving in meant a man of quality moving him out. Then Edmund crossed the yard on the fourth day and asked plainly, "Mr. May, I've set this gatepost crooked twice, and I can't see why. Will you show me how it's done properly?"
Nobody had called him Mr. May in thirty years. Charlotte watched something in the old man loosen that had been held tight for a long time.