Excerpt from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

None of them discussed it, but instead of parting ways at the end of the shift, they walked together to Victoria. They found crowds, because the trains had been stopped for the day, and then, closer to the building, bricks everywhere. Since everybody else was more interested in finding out when the services would resume, it wasn't difficult to get to the edge of the wrecked cloakroom. The wooden rafters were blasted as though something monstrous had broken out. A top hat still sat in the rubble, and a red scarf had turned greyish where frost stuck it to the bricks. Policemen were clearing the wreckage from the outside in, breath steaming. After a while they started to look warily at the four telegraphists. Thaniel could see it must have looked strange, four thin clerks lined up neatly in black and staying to look for much longer than anyone else. They broke apart. Rather than go straight home, he walked around St James's Park first, soaking in the nearly green grass and the empty, raked-over flowerbeds. It was so open, though, that the great fronts of the Admiralty and the Home Office still looked close. He wished for some proper woods. On the wish's tail came an urge to go up to Lincoln for a visit, but there was another man living in the gamekeeper's cottage now, and a new duke at the big house.

He went home circuitously, avoiding Parliament.

'See this?' George the beggar said, holding up a newspaper at him when he went by. The front page was mostly taken up with an etching of the blasted station.

'Just now.'

'What times, eh? Wouldn't have had this when I was a lad.'

'But they burned all the Catholics in those days, didn't they,' said Thaniel. He looked down at the picture. Seeing it in a newspaper made it more real than seeing it in person, and suddenly he felt annoyed with himself. They were supposed to have their affairs in order. In order meant a state which relatives could make sense of if it all went badly in May. Annabel would never sell something like a watch, even if she was scraping to keep the boys in clothes that fitted. It was no use willing it to her.

'Oh, har har,' snarled George. 'Wait, where are you going?' 'Pawn shop. Changed my mind about something.'

Just beyond the prison was a pawnbroker who called himself a jeweller despite the three gold balls outside the shop.

The front window was hung about with shabby-looking gold and pasted with advertisements for other shops or by people with second-hand things too big to bring in person. The newest was one of the police notices to keep watch. It was clerkishly pedantic of him, but he was starting to feel tetchy about those. Bombers did not go about trailing wires and fuses.

'Silly, isn't it?' the pawnbroker said, seeing him frown. 'Been coming round pasting those up all over the place for months. I keep saying, all our bombers are safe locked up.' He nodded to the prison. 'But up they go.' He had one stuck to the top of the counter too, and peeled it off to show another underneath. The paste had made it translucent and there was another under that, so that 'keep watch' had a diagonal, fading shadow.

'They're everywhere at Whitehall,' Thaniel said, and then took out the watch. 'What's this worth?'

The pawnbroker glanced at it, and then looked again, and then shook his head. 'No. I'm not taking one of his.'

'What? Whose?'

The pawnbroker looked annoyed. 'Look, I'm not falling for this again. Two was enough, thanks. The marvellous disappearing watches, brilliant trick, I'm sure, but you'll need to try it on someone who hasn't seen it before.'

'It's not a trick. What are you talking about?'

'What am I talking about? I mean they don't stay pawned, do they? Someone sells one on, I pay good money, the sodding things disappear a day later. I heard it all round town, it's not just me. You get on before I call the constable.'

Excerpted from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. Copyright © 2015 by Natasha Pulley. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury USA. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.