She awoke some time later, on a red, plush velvet couch and near a crackling fire. She was covered in a knitted blanket and her head rested on a sofa pillow. She looked around her, taking in her surroundings and noticed a large black dog lying on a rug in front of the fire. The room was unfamiliar, if warm, and Cinnamon sat up very quickly. Ooh, bad decision. Her head throbbed terribly, and she nearly blacked out again.
“Ah, you’re awake. Careful, careful now, my dear. You’ve had a fright, I’m afraid, and you ought to just lie still a moment.”
At first Cinnamon didn’t see who the voice belonged to, but as he spoke the man came around the couch and crouched down next to her. He looked to be about thirty, with dark blue eyes and thick dark lashes. He wore his hair very short, but she could see that it was thick, dark hair. He was strikingly handsome. Cinnamon never trusted handsome men.
“Who… who are you?” asked Cinnamon, putting a hand up to her aching head.
“Here, this will help you,” the man said, taking a warm, wet washcloth from a nearby basin and laying it on her forehead. He took a second washcloth from the basin and dabbed it lightly on her lower lip.
“When you fell you seem to have bitten your lip.” He pressed the washcloth against the slight cut, and she pulled away instinctively.
“Stop that. Who are you?” she asked. She didn’t like how close he was to her.
“I assume you must be Miss Cinnamon Rassmussen, new mistress of the plantation.” He said with a sigh, wringing the rag out in the basin, “And I am Jeremy Tarleton. I’m the owner of the Devil’s Bayou Plantation, which runs right up next to your Eau D’Noir. That’s where you are, which I assume would be your next question. I’m afraid my dog Ajax and I were out walking and caught you somewhat unawares, and as we approached you, you fainted.”
“And fired,” Cinnamon said, recalling, “Mister, I coulda killed you! What do you mean by creepin’ all over a person’s property like that?”
Jeremy chuckled, “Ah, yes. That. Fire you did, miss, but you didn’t hit anything vital. I’m not entirely sure you hit anything at all.”
Cinnamon was a bit irked by his tone.
The dog on the rug whined a bit, and cocked his head.
“Stay, Ajax, stay there, boy,” ordered Jeremy.
Cinnamon looked at the dog a minute longer. Dog nothing! That was a wolf, the very wolf whom she had seen in the town earlier that very day. The red leather collar he wore left no doubt.
“What kind of a man walks alone at night in a graveyard? With a wolf no less!” wondered Cinnamon to herself.
Jeremy looked at her intently for a moment, then stood.
“I think a cup of tea is in order. That will set you to rights, I am certain. And I’ll get you a fresh basin.” Jeremy took the basin in one hand and walked towards the door.
He walked out the door, and when in the hall, Cinnamon heard him talking to someone in the hall. She shifted under her blanket, and slowly pushed herself into a sitting position. She looked around the room again. Her eyes fell on the window, and she briefly considered escaping out thru it, but convinced herself that that would be an overreaction.
Something was unsettling. Jeremy was certainly being kind, being gentlemanly, but he set her on edge just the same. She didn’t like him. And she didn’t like it here. She slid her feet onto the floor and stood up, slowly, carefully. The black wolf on the rug whined and cocked his head.
“Shh, shh dog,” she said, trying to remember what Jeremy had called him, “Shh, good boy…Ajax.”
Cinnamon realized that she had socks on her feet now. Warm, thick, woolen ones. Jeremy Tarleton certainly was attentive. And a warm robe around her shoulders. Warm, soft, and dark red like the theme of the room. It smelled faintly of cigar smoke and a spice, like nutmeg or cinnamon. The shoulders were much too broad for her, and the sleeves drowned her arms in their length.
Perhaps Cinnamon was just nosy, or perhaps it was her childish, inquisitive nature, but she padded quietly over to the mantle, crowded with curious brickabrack, and began to shuffle through it’s contents.
What a curious place. The mantle was covered in dust, as thick as the dust as Eau D’Nior before her clean-up. Old books, parchment, feather quills and assorted rubbish. Cinnamon lifted up a silk scarf and then dropped it suddenly with a gasp. She looked briefly back at the wolf on the rug, and the lifted the scarf again.
It was a skull; a wolf skull. Bleached white, with some signs of chipping around the edges. All the teeth were still intact, tho one of the canines was slightly broken at the tip. She lifted it up off of the mantle, and it’s outline was left in the dust, visible even in the flickering light of the fire. The firelight reflected off the red drapes and the red carpet, staining everything in the room with it’s crimson. The skull too, seemed leering and red in the dim light.
“You’re a curious little thing, aren’t you?”
Jeremy Tarelton was suddenly right behind her. She jumped and stifled a cry, instinctively hiding the skull behind her back, although she knew he had already seen it in her hands. Jeremy chuckled deep in his throat, and reached around behind her to take the skull.
“I’ll have to be more careful with you, won’t I?” he said as he set the skull back in it’s place on the mantle.
Jeremy was a very tall man, Cinnamon realized. Standing next to him, she just reached his shoulder with her head.
“I’ll scare you to death by accident before the week is out. Do you always startle so easily?”
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