Corvin found it funny.

That was the tell.

In his world a woman was precisely as valuable as her documented assets, and the idea that the meek assistant he’d condescended to marry might be worth more than he was did not frighten him or intrigue him — it amused him, the way a child’s grand claim amuses an adult certain of the child’s smallness.

I had spent two years watching for exactly that reflex and mostly failing to find it, because he had been careful in courtship, careful the way men are careful with a prize they intend to keep.

It had taken a marriage license and a morning to bring it out of him.

Now here it was, whole and unmistakable, a man laughing in his kitchen at the notion that the woman he’d priced by the month might be his equal.