Sacred and Profane

by Nina Merrill

  Jennie fought down her fury at his reaction—she was neither unclean nor sinful, just a woman who wanted a man who wanted her in return.

  She heard her own bitter laugh. “Is this where you call me a foul temptress, as Napier would do?”

  Tibald stared at her. “Jeanne!”

  “I am not evil. Just…modern. And female. But look how you wipe your hands after touching me, as if I’m unclean.”

  He turned his hands palm up and looked at them, then looked at Jennie. “It’s not that. Not you. Me. I am the unclean one. And I do not trust myself.”

  She looked at him for a long moment before stepping close to him. Wariness flared in his eyes as her hands lifted toward his face and cupped his bearded jaw. “It should be enough that I trust you, Tibald.” She knew what a crystal glass might feel like, vibrating at such a pitch that without proper care, she would shatter. If only Tibald would give her two minutes—even one, perhaps—she could change the dynamic of their relationship forever.

  “You should not trust me, Jeanne.” His voice shook. She saw his pupils, already large in the relatively low light in the study, slowly widening as she stroked her palm along his jaw line, feeling the wiry hairs of his beard. He wore his beard shorter than many of the older Templars she had seen. It lay sleek against his skin. She had felt its prickle as he kissed her and flushed to think what it might feel like touching her elsewhere.

  “Shhh.” She laid a finger across his lips to silence more objections, meeting his liquid stare. “Like this…”

  Chapter 12

  Jennie didn't quite have to tiptoe to touch her mouth to Tibald’s, though he was resolute and did not bend his head to meet her. Her finger brushed to the side and her lips replaced it with the gentlest of pressures. A rush of air met her as Tibald exhaled, immediately afterward drawing a sharp breath. She tilted her head and kissed him more firmly, eyelids half-mast. With the increase of pressure, Tibald’s hands clutched at her. The troublesome mantle slid down from her shoulders again and with a frustrated mutter he fought free of it and hurled it aside before he caught her ribs in a painful grasp. He took control of the kiss, mouth pressing roughly against hers, and Jennie shook her head and spoke with her lips still on his.

  “Stop, Tibald. Let me.”

  He drew back to look at her once more, consternation clear on his face. Men didn't permit women such liberties, such outrageous, sensual leadership. Yet he waited. Jennie stroked her right thumb over his lower lip, tugging it down, and left her thumb there when she kissed him once more, her own lips warmly parted. The tip of her tongue slipped out to explore the sinful, sharp-cut arches of his upper lip.

  Tibald shuddered and jerked as though she had touched his naked cock. His breath came short, hissing past his teeth and lips. Jennie sensed the restraint required to hold himself still while her mouth and tongue and the pad of her thumb controlled his mouth, opening it as she desired, guiding him.

  Tibald was not the only one profoundly shaken by the experience of lips pressing sweetly together in a slow and tender exploration. Jennie had expected to find herself pleasantly excited by the novelty of kissing this knight, whose sensuality was deeply buried. Part of her had continued to believe she was caught in a long, elaborate dream of the past and would waken, but never in her dreams had she experienced such sensory overload. She felt his bearded cheeks in her palms, the softness of his sandy hair woven between her fingertips, the thrum of his body as he strove for control and fought with his own instincts. She wondered if he could feel her racing pulse in her fingers.

  Could she really be in Paris of 1307, seducing a Templar in his own preceptory? The thought raced further. Was seduction truly her aim? And was she more attracted to the man himself, or the idea that she might be the cause of Tibald’s breaking faith with his oaths and his order?

  Sometimes it was hell being an intellectual. Here she was, unable to stop her clockwork brain from ticking over all the possibilities when, by rights, she should be enjoying the moments in Tibald’s arms, riding the flood of passion that swelled like an incoming tide. With a murmur at her own didactic tendencies, Jennie settled closer to Tibald and slid her arms around his neck, uncaring about the vellum tucked in her sleeve. As she did so, the tip of Tibald’s tongue touched her own and froze at that intimate contact.

  Jennie took advantage of the moment to slide her tongue alongside Tibald’s and was rewarded with another convulsive twitch of his body and a renewed clenching of his hands at her ribs. Yet he did his best to allow her to instruct him, waiting for her next move as though he were under a spell. Jennie repeated the slow, wet silk glide and waited. He tasted of ale and bread, and the faint sweetness of the birch twig he had chewed.

  He still hadn’t quite grasped the idea. Jennie darted her tongue further into his mouth as a prelude to a soft, rhythmic suction, drawing him forward playfully. Tibald’s tongue brushed over her lips and she opened them further, inviting him in.

  From the instant his tongue was drawn into her mouth, Jennie could feel his body’s violent trembling. She thought he had separated his feet for better balance, but instead he suddenly leaned heavily against her and the next thing she knew he was falling to his knees, taking her with him. His legs had simply failed him in the onslaught of sensation. Jennie marveled to think her relatively tame kisses had stricken him so.

  Their new position kneeling on the stone floor left her off-balance, clinging to Tibald. His hands began to roam, learning the curve of rib and waist and hip. She made a quiet, encouraging sound of pleasure into his mouth, and when his left hand slid downward and cupped her buttock through the rough gown and nightie, made another. He needed no other invitation, nor any further lessons. His movements nestled her closer at last, until they were body-to-body and Jennie could feel his arousal, rigid and swollen, against her abdomen.

  Oh.

  Oh.

  She gasped and twined closer. Tibald shuddered, his arms tightened around her and he groaned. “Jesu. Jesu Christe, Jeanne!” He lifted his head away from hers and stared down at her.

  Jennie saw the wetness their mouths had shared glistening on his lips in the watery light from the courtyard window. The sight made her weak and she closed her eyes, her head falling back. Tibald cupped the back of her head and returned her mouth to easy reach.

  He was a quick study, and eager.

  Tibald’s hand slid upward and came trembling forward to cup her breast in his palm. Her nipple hardened as his thumb brushed across it. His thumb returned for a second exploration of her burgeoning nipple through the cloth, ringing it. Jennie returned the favors, caressing his firm buttocks and considering cupping his erection in her hand. That seemed so forward, though the socio-sexual mores of the twenty-first century could in no way be applied to the fourteenth. Moments later she didn’t need to make a decision, for Tibald clutched her snugly against him with all his formidable strength and began to bend her backward over his arm. It seemed he meant to lower her to the floor, and an image of this knight parfit gentil, his body above hers, their cloaks forming a tangled bed, his reluctant but overwhelming passion, blinded her.

  Tibald moved his mouth from hers, once again taking control of the embrace, and trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses over the skin of her neck and into the sagging neckline of her dress. He tugged the neck aside to give access to the smooth skin of her breast, gazing down at the soft curve that shuddered gently with each hammer blow of her heart.

  Jennie saw the desire plain in his eyes and felt it in the way his pelvis pressed hard to hers, moving ever so slightly, seeking the friction they both longed for. Tibald met her gaze.

  Just like that, the embrace was over.

  Tibald released her after ensuring she had her balance, then he rose and staggered away from her, walking stiffly, to press his forehead against a cupboard door.

  “Tibald?” Shaken, wanting so much more, yet frightened that she’d pushed too far and ruined the fragile trust between them, Jennie got to her feet,
managing not to step on the dress’s trailing hem. “Tibald?”

  The palm of his hand shot toward her, blocking her approach. “Do not,” he warned her, his voice thick with intense emotion. “Do not. I’m sorry, Jeanne. I should not have touched you.”

  “It was my fault.” Jennie couldn’t believe she was fighting back tears.

  “You are but a woman, a weak and frail thing. I’m responsible for this debacle.”

  “Debacle?” Tears changed in a flash to anger. “Debacle?” Ignoring his outthrust hand, she grasped his wrist and pulled to make him face her. “I don’t know about you, but—but that was one of the best kisses ever, and—and—I didn’t want it to stop.”

  Now he did turn, and with a simple twist freed his arm from her grip. He did it with grace and economy, as if she weren’t holding him at all, though she had held as tightly as she could. Jennie realized anew that his strength was real. Tibald was a trained man of war. He kept himself fit and toned and strong as a Templar should, and in comparison she was indeed weak and frail. Had he chosen to take her there on the rough stone floor, she would have had no defenses. Instead, this deeply passionate man was bound by something even stronger than his flesh—his integrity. Though he’d protested that his flesh and his will were at war, she knew that his head ruled his body. It wasn’t what she’d expected to find in a fourteenth-century man.

  “I’m sorry, Tibald,” she whispered. “It won’t happen again. I’ll…I’ll go back to my room.”

  “I’ll escort you.” He reached out to straighten the neck of her gown where her breast was still exposed, and she saw with bitter pleasure that his hand shook. “Get your things.”

  As she reached for the fallen cloak, the corner of the vellum peeped from the cuff of her sleeve. She flushed darkly at her own treachery, swallowing hard, hiding her emotions by swirling the cloak around her and fastening it properly. Tibald moved to the door to await her, and she betrayed his trust a second time, snatching a quill from the table and concealing it in the folds of her mantle. Hopefully one quill wouldn't be missed.

  She followed him through the preceptory grounds, moving quickly to keep up with his agitated strides. He didn't speak again. Back in her room, she watched from a seat on the bed as Tibald prodded at her fire and added three short logs. The day was warm and she didn't require the extra heat from the fire, but she understood his need for action.

  “I am truly sorry,” she said at last, unable to bear the tense silence.

  Tibald looked at her from where he crouched on the flat hearth. His gaze moved slowly over her, starting with her feet, then drifted toward the pillows. His mouth tightened. He rose without a word and went from the room, for once closing the door completely.

  Jennie gazed after him for a long moment before she extracted the page of vellum and carried it to the window seat where there was light. It was indeed the series of letters she’d translated once before.

  She wished she’d been brazen enough to steal ink from the study as well. Moving to the table, she fetched the ewer to the hearth, where she scraped soot from the ashes into a small pile and moistened it. She mixed it thoroughly, then daubed the quill in the black puddle. With tight lips she began the laborious process of recreating the Atbash cipher and her Greek and Hebrew alphabets on the back of the page, continually blowing on the wet sooty marks to dry them, ready at any moment to shove the vellum into hiding.

  There was no way to know whether recreating “I am the door” would return her to Minneapolis. But in truth, she wasn’t certain she wanted it to work. Her thoughts kept returning to those forbidden minutes in Tibald’s arms, when she felt him throwing restraint aside. A tear ran along her nose and smudged her untidy work, and she scowled. At last she closed her eyes and surrendered herself to sensation, however thinly recreated by her own imagination. She could have him, in her thoughts and wishes, regardless of how shameful he might think them were he able to peer into her mind.

  Chapter 13

  Four days later, Jennie lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, defeated, bored and angry.

  If I had my journal, this is the entry I would make. September 26, still in fucking Paris, God damn it. There must be more to time travel than simply perverting an alphabet or two. Imagine that.

  Tibald won’t speak to me, not even late at night when no one can hear. Napier’s pleased by that development. I take my meals in my room like any good prisoner. I’m half tipsy all the time, too much wine and ale.

  I miss the radio. I miss potato chips. I would kill thirty men for one bite of dark chocolate. Forty for a cup of bad coffee. Fifty for a bath in a real tub, with soap. One hundred for a single squirt of shampoo.

  The noise of men drilling again drew her to the window. She opened the closed shutters and leaned out, surprised by the strength of the breeze rushing past the tower. Below, the knights were mock-dueling, striking in a rehearsed rhythm, in strokes called by a burly knight who stood on a mounting block where he could watch the men before him. It was a strange ballet, a violent contra dance. Pairs of men hacked away at each other, most with wooden staves, but a few with their swords.

  Even as she marveled at the brutal grace of their movements, her eyes sought Tibald’s form amongst the two dozen men below. She leaned out for a better view, then gasped as the wind tugged away the kerchief from where she had draped it like a shawl around her shoulders. The streamer of cloth fluttered downward, twisting and contorting, catching the eyes of those below.

  Jennie cursed, too late to reach out for it. One of the men looked past the escaped kerchief to her window, meeting her eyes.

  Tibald.

  He was shirtless, sweating, his hair bound back from his face in a club. Even from where she stood three stories up, she could see the smooth, clenching curves of his muscled arms and torso. Things she had only felt through his clothing when they embraced a few days ago. She’d seen the grace of his movements before, in his walk and when he interposed himself between her and Napier, but his drilling showed a fluidity and tethered ferocity she hadn’t imagined.

  What would such a trained body, such strength and singleness of focus, make Tibald like in bed? His kisses had been inexperienced at best and that undoubtedly would translate to similar inexperience with sex itself, but he’d been a quick and earnest learner, honest and attentive in his passion, and in her own experience it was that attention to detail that mattered most in bed. A hot throb of purely sexual need speared her abdomen as she stared, and he stared back.

  Too late he saw his dueling partner’s—Jennie’s overheated brain registered Napier’s dark hair and whippy build—sword slip past his guard, and even though Napier struggled to pull his stroke, the edge of his sword slid along Tibald’s ribs, opening a cut that instantly streamed red. Napier’s sword clattered to the ground and Tibald looked down at himself in astonishment.

  Terror and dread ripped a hole in Jennie’s soul. She spun from the window and pelted for the door, startling Boudin who was drowsily tossing his dice again. She slipped his grasp as he reached for the flying tail of her dress and raced down the stairs. At the bottom of the tower, she had to stop to struggle with the heavy door. Boudin was only a half second behind her, and he put his hand over hers on the latch.

  “What do you think you're doing, lady?”

  “Tibald’s been wounded! I must see that he's well. It was my fault that Napier’s sword—”

  Boudin looked at her wild-eyed face with amusement. “Tibald? Wounded by his companion? I think not. They’re too evenly matched. The finest knights in this commandery.”

  Jennie yanked at the door, succeeding in opening it only a few inches before he leaned on it and pushed it closed again. “I saw the blood myself. I saw the sword, it cut him just here!” She drew a line on her own ribcage, breasts thrusting forward, and Boudin blushed darkly and looked away from her.

  “Lady, you should return to your room—”

  She had no patience for his boyish sensibilities and em
barrassment. “Boudin, I must see to Tibald! The barbarities you call medical treatment—he will die from that if not properly cared for.”

  At last her panic seemed to penetrate his brain. “Wait here. I’ll see if what you say is true.” He left her pacing alone in the anteroom, but soon returned. “There was an accident indeed. But all will be well—Napier is tending his companion’s wound at the hospital.”

  “Forgive me if I do not trust—” She bit her tongue to stop herself from slandering Napier. Much as she disliked him, she had no reason to think he would harm Tibald out of spite or anger. She affected a more demure look and tone, casting her glance downward, and put soft hands on Boudin’s arm. “Please, sir. It was my head covering blowing from my window that distracted Tibald from the practice duel. It’s my fault he was wounded. Please take me to see that he’s being properly cared for. I must apologize to him.”

  Boudin was clearly overwhelmed by her nearness. She pressed the advantage, leaning closer and looking sweetly sorrowful.

  “Lady…”

  “Please, Boudin. I’m so very worried.” It wasn’t a lie—she was possessed by fear for Tibald. From where she had stood at her window, she couldn’t tell if the wound was deep, just that it had bled profusely. “Please.”

  The youth hesitated, but acquiesced. “I suppose it can do no harm to prove to you he’ll be well. I will take you to the hospital, but you must promise me that afterward you’ll return to your room without argument.”

  “I promise,” she breathed. “Thank you. Thank you!”

  Jennie dogged his heels as he led her through the door and along the north wall of the tower. He led her into a cool, low building where she could see very little in the dimness. Ahead of her there was a commotion, low voices and the clattering of utensils. Boudin peered into two or three small rooms along the hallway and kept going. She crowded him, bumping into him as he paused at last, and trying to see past him.