Secrets and Scrabble Box Set by Josh Lanyon

Author:Josh Lanyon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cozy mysteries, LGBTQ fiction, gay mysteries, mm romance
Publisher: Josh Lanyon
Published: 2021-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

A silver sliver of crescent moon seemed to have hooked itself on one of the twin conical towers of Captain’s Seat when Ellery arrived home that Tuesday evening.

Ellery parked in the drive and let Watson out to run around chasing varmints both real and imagined.

Arf. Arf. Arf.

Watson’s piercing bark echoed off the stone drive and towers as he raced from flower bed to steps and back again.

Ellery propped his hands on his hips and drew in deep breaths of cool evening air. The soothing scents of the warm meadow and ocean drifted on the summer breeze. Lights twinkled through the trees. Many of the island’s summer homes were occupied now, though Ellery’s home was still quite isolated from its nearest neighbors.

Home was kind of a weird word for Captain’s Seat.

The decaying Dutch Renaissance style mansion Ellery had inherited from his Great-great-great-aunt Eudora had been commissioned in the eighteenth century by the famous pirate hunter Captain Horatio Page.

Why a pirate hunter would decide to settle down on an island that had served as a pirate sanctuary for a couple of centuries was a question for the ages. Safe to say, the old boy had not been easily intimidated.

Captain’s Seat boasted—or maybe confessed was a better word—six bedrooms and seven baths. The bedrooms were spacious, even cavernous, from a heating-bill standpoint. Luckily, each bedroom had its own fireplace. Along with all the bedrooms and fireplaces came a grand foyer, a great hall, a gallery, a drawing room, a library, a game room (sadly, popular games in Captain Page’s day had not included Scrabble), a pantry, and a wine cellar that could easily double for a dungeon.

When Ellery wasn’t working at the bookshop—which, granted, wasn’t often—he spent his time renovating Captain’s Seat. Given the years and years of neglect and his own lack of experience in home renovation, it was beginning to look like restoring the mansion would be his life’s mission. His undertaking had been made even more difficult by a fire on the second level that had happened in June.

Sometimes Jack joined him in the home repairs. Jack’s boyhood summers had been spent working for his father’s construction company, and he was an expert at home improvements. With Jack’s help, Ellery had managed to repair most of the upstairs smoke damage and refinish the railings and bannister of the tall, graceful staircase in the formal entry hall.

Jack seemed to find the work relaxing, and they’d spent many pleasant days sanding, painting, hammering. Sometimes they talked, and sometimes they just worked in companionable silence. Sometimes they shared a meal. Sometimes they didn’t.

Ellery let Watson run himself out, and then he unlocked the front door, stepped over the scattered envelopes and flyers that had arrived in the day’s mail, and flipped on the newly rewired chandelier. Light sparkled off the dangling crystals and flickered like butterflies against the pearl-pale walls.

Watson ran to pick up his favorite stuffed-toy hedgehog, which he proceeded to toss in the air.

Ellery laughed, grabbed the hedgehog, and pitched it up the staircase.

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