“Where are we going? The Tube station’s that way.” Rory nodded in the direction they were coming from.

“We’re not going home, or not just yet.”

“Oh? I thought we were going to decorate our living room, drink lots of advocaat, and then get naked on the rug.”

Jack threw back his head and laughed. “That sounds like a plan, but there’s something I want to do first.”

“You mean something is more important than naked advocaat?”

Jack just smiled in response. There wasn’t a lot that was more important than naked advocaat, but what they were about to do next just about topped it.

The tiny street would be so easy to miss in the messy and higgledy-piggledy maze that was the City of London.

“Jack? What—?”

Jack pressed his fingertips to Rory’s lips and gazed into Rory’s questioning, confused eyes.

“Just go with me on this, okay?”

Jack pushed the door open, and he and Rory stepped into another time.

The shop was crammed with tall and narrow display cabinets, all of them holding a treasure of watches. Behind the counter, in a corner and almost hidden, sat a small, round, bald-headed man. A pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose, and another was wedged on the top of his head as he worked on the mechanism of a pocket watch, using what looked like a set of toy tools.

“Mr. De Lacy.” The man put aside his work, stood up and extended his hand to Jack.

“Mr. Hogarth. Let me introduce Rory Kincaid, my fiancé.”

Jack moved aside to allow Rory to shake Mr. Hogarth’s hand. Jack smiled; in a moment everything would be revealed.

“Let me bring your order.” Mr. Hogarth disappeared into a back room.

“Jack, I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

Before Jack could answer, Mr. Hogarth returned bearing a small black box, which he handed over to Jack.

“Please.” Mr. Hogarth gestured to a small table and a couple of chairs on the other side of the shop, in the only space not taken up with display cabinets, before he returned to his place once more behind the counter and took up his work as though he were alone.

“I want you to have this,” Jack said, opening the box as soon as he and Rory were seated.

“What?” Rory gaped at the watch, displayed on a pad of black velvet. “But we agreed a strict ten-pound budget, just something silly this year. I haven’t—”

“No, it’s not a Christmas present.”

“Then what—? I don’t understand.”

Jack took the watch out of the box. Like his own, it was plain and unadorned. The black Roman numerals were stark against the white face; the casing was gold, deep and burnished.

“When I was twenty-one, my father presented me with a watch from this shop. He did the same for George,” Jack said, referring to his elder brother. “My father also had a watch on his twenty-first birthday, as did my grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather. The De Lacy men have had watches in one form or another from Hogarth’s since the late eighteenth century. All those watches came from here, from this very shop.” Jack glanced toward the counter, but Mr. Hogarth had gone and was now nowhere to be seen.

“This isn’t a Christmas present, Ro. This is something every De Lacy man receives. And I wanted you to have one, too, because that’s what you’re on the point of becoming: a De Lacy man.” Jack’s lips lifted in a wry smile. “I didn’t know you when you turned twenty-one, although I wish I did. I’m just making up for lost time. On Christmas Eve, you’re going to take my name. I want you to be wearing this watch when you do.”

“Jack, I–I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything. Just accept it, along with the words I had engraved.”

Jack held the watch out. All his focus was on his fiancé, reading for the first time the words engraved not only on the watch but on Jack’s heart.

Love, always and forever.

Four simple words which said everything Jack held deep inside about the man he’d found huddled on his doorstep just two Christmases before.