The young pastor\u2019s daughter reaches out to the wounded rogue, who cringes and shifts aside. \u201cStay away from me,\u201d he snarls- averting his eyes, as if his very presence might defile her. \u201cYou will be marred, tainted- have nothing to do with me, leave!\u201d<\/p>\n
She is transfixed. In a strange play of words unsaid, his discomfort in her presence betrayed a heart of gold- far more sacred than anything she\u2019d ever witnessed, among any man of the cloth or state. How apt, she thought, that she were to catch a glimpse of grace and salvation, so far from home.<\/p>\n
The wildflower in the rough, battered mercilessly by the elements, struck her as more beautiful, more honest and true than the rose in her garden, carefully engineered to be chastity incarnate.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut he is a rogue,\u201d she could hear her father\u2019s voice echoing in her head. \u201cA heathen, a godless man!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI could tolerate it,\u201d she thought. \u201cAnd if there\u2019s anything you taught me, it\u2019s that I should.\u201d She looked at him dead in the eye, and in the briefest of instances, she saw everything. Hopes, dreams, a bitter childhood, a lost love, a pure heart hardened by pain and hardship, decisions that nobody should ever have to make, humanity, love, love, love. The grimace faded from his brow, his heart was racing just as fast as hers, overwhelmed by more truth than I can speak of. In that moment they were infinite.<\/p>\n
She glimpsed over her shoulder, as one tends to do when one has unearthed priceless treasure, especially if one is too honest to be any good at deceit. And when she turned to face him, he was gone, stolen into the night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The young pastor\u2019s daughter reaches out to the wounded rogue, who cringes and shifts aside. \u201cStay away from me,\u201d he snarls- averting his eyes, as if his very presence might defile her. \u201cYou will be marred, tainted- have nothing to do with me, leave!\u201d She is transfixed. In a strange… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-2yB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}