Miss Elizabeth stood very still. It were like she was waiting for a gust of wind to blow itself out. When it had and I was finished, she took a deep breath, though what come out were almost a whisper, with no force behind it. “I saved your life once. I dug you out of the clay. And this is how you repay me, with the unkindest thoughts.”

The wind come back like a gale. I cried out in such rage Miss Elizabeth stepped back. “Yes, you saved my life! And I’ll feel the burden of being grateful to you for always. I’ll never be equal to you, no matter what I do. Whatever monsters I find, however much money I earn, it will never equal your place. So why can’t you leave Colonel Birch to me? Please.” I was crying now.

Miss Elizabeth watched me with her level grey eyes until I had used up my tears. “I release you of the burden of your gratitude, Mary,” she said. “I can at least do that. I dug you out that day as I would have done for anyone, and as anyone else passing would have done for you too.” She paused, and I could see her deciding what to say next. “But I must tell you something,” she continued, “not to hurt you, but to warn you. If you are expecting anything from Colonel Birch you will be disappointed. I had occasion to meet him before the auction. We ran into each other at the British Museum.” She paused. “He was accompanying a lady. A widow. They seemed to have an understanding. I’m telling you this so that you will not have your expectations raised. You are a working girl, and you cannot expect more than you have. Mary, don’t go.”

But I had already turned and begun to run, as fast and far from her words as I could.

I was not there to meet the next London coach when it come to Charmouth. It was a soft afternoon, with plenty of visitors out, and I was behind the table outside our house, selling curies to passersby.

I am not a superstitious person, but I knew he would come, for though he did not know it, it was my birthday. I had never had a birthday present, and was due one. Mam would say his auction money was the present, but to me he was the gift.

When the clock on the Shambles bell-tower struck five I begun to follow Colonel Birch’s progress in my mind even as I was selling. I saw him alight from the coach and hire a horse from the stables, then ride along the road till he could cut across one of Lord Henley’s fields above Black Ven to Charmouth Lane. He would follow that to Church Street, then down past St Michael’s and into Butter Market. There all he had to do was to go right round the corner and he’d come into Cockmoile Square.

When I looked up, he appeared just as I knew he would, riding up on his borrowed chestnut horse and looking down at me. “Mary,” he said.

“Colonel Birch,” I replied, and curtseyed very low, as if I were a lady.

Colonel Birch dismounted, reached for my hand and kissed it in front of all the visitors rummaging through the curies and the villagers walking past. I didn’t care. When he looked up at me, still bent over my hand, I spied behind his gladness uncertainty, and I knew then that Elizabeth Philpot had not been lying about the widow lady. As much as I had wanted to disbelieve her, she was not the sort to lie. As gently as I could I pulled my hand from Colonel Birch’s grasp. Then the shadow of uncertainty become a true flame of sorrow, and we stood looking at each other without speaking.

Over Colonel Birch’s shoulder there was a movement that distracted me from his sad eyes, and I saw a couple come arm in arm along Bridge Street, he stocky and strong, she bobbing up and down at his side like a boat in rough water. It was Fanny Miller, who had lately married Billy Day, one of the quarrymen who helped me dig out monsters. Even the quarrymen were taken, then. Fanny stared at us. When she met my eye she clutched her husband’s arm and hurried away along the street as fast as her game leg would let her.

Then I knew what I would do with Colonel Birch, widow lady or no. It would be my present to myself, for I was not likely to have another chance. I nodded at him. “Go and see Mam, sir. She’s been expecting you. I’ll find you after.”

I did not want to watch him hand over the money. Though I was grateful for it, I did not want to see it. I only wanted to see him. When he had tied up the horse and gone inside, I packed away the curies, then went quick up Butter Market and followed Colonel Birch’s path in reverse. I knew he would lodge as he always did at the Queen’s Arms in Charmouth, and so would pass this way again. When I got to Lord Henley’s field off Charmouth Lane I crossed to a stile and sat on it to wait.

Colonel Birch held his back so straight as he rode he looked like a tin soldier. With the sun low behind him and casting a long shadow before, I could not see his face until he pulled up alongside me. As I climbed to the top rung of the stile and balanced there, he took my hand so that I would not fall.

“Mary, I cannot marry you,” he said.

“I know, sir. It don’t matter.”

“You are sure?”

“I am. It is my birthday today. I am twenty-one years old and this is what I want.”

I was not a horse rider, but that day I had no fear as I reached over and swung into the space between his arms.

He took me inland. Colonel Birch knew the surrounding countryside better than I did, for I never normally went into the fields, but spent all of my time on the shore. We rode through dusk’s shadows lit here and there with panes of sunlight, up to the main road to Exeter. Once across we headed down darkening fields. Along the way we did not murmur sweet words to each other like courting couples, for we were not courting. Nor did I relax in his arms, for the horse swayed and the saddle pushed hard against me and I had to concentrate so I wouldn’t fall off. But I was where I wanted to be and did not mind.

An orchard at the bottom of the field waited for us. When I lay down with Colonel Birch it was on a sheet of apple blossom petals covering the ground like snow. There I found out that lightning can come from deep inside the body. I have no regret discovering that.

I learned something else that evening, which come to me afterwards. I was lying in his arms looking up at the sky, where I counted four stars, when he asked, “What will you do with the money I have given your family, Mary?”

“Pay off our debts and buy a new table.”

Colonel Birch chuckled. “That is very practical of you. Will you not do something for yourself?”

“I suppose I could buy a new bonnet.” Mine had just been crushed under our coupling.

“What about something more ambitious?”

I was silent.

“For example,” Colonel Birch continued, “you could move to a house with a bigger shop. Up Broad Street, for example, to where there’s a good shop front, with a big window and more light in which to display your fossils. That way you would get more trade.”

“So you’re expecting me to keep on finding and selling curies, are you, sir? That I’ll never marry, but run a shop.”

“I did not say that.”

“It’s all right, sir. I know I won’t marry. No one wants someone like me for a wife.”

“That is not what I meant, Mary. You misunderstand me.”

“Do I, sir?” I rolled off his shoulder and lay flat on the ground. Even since we had been talking it seemed the sky had got darker, and more and more stars had joined the first scattering.

Colonel Birch sat up stiffly, for he was old, and lying on the ground must hurt him. He looked down at me. It was too dark to see his expression. “I was thinking about your future as a fossil hunter, not as a wife. There are many women-most women, in fact-who can be perfectly good wives. But there is only one of you. Do you know, when I set up the auction in London I met many people who professed to know a great deal about fossils: what they are, how they came to be here, what they mean. But none of them knows even half of what you understand.”