" I only want her to feel safe. No’just with me, but with all of us.”
Marcum smiled thoughtfully from behind the desk. “She will, son. It will simply take time.”He sipped at his whisky, studying his son closely for a long while. “Are ye willin’to wait?”
From what his father told him, it could be years before Laurin felt safe enough to allow him entry into her heart. Years. “It be true, that I be no’gettin’any younger,”he answered.
“None of us are,”Marcum replied dryly.
There was not another young lass on their island, within their clan, who had ever made his heart thrum so feverishly against his chest. Laurin’s beauty, her smile, were rivaled by none. From the first moment he’d set eyes on her, he simply knew. Knew to his bones, that she was the one. He’d settle for no other.
“Aye, I can wait. As long as she needs.”
Marcum quirked a questioning brow. “Years if need be?”
He gave a curt nod of his head before downing the last of his whisky. “A lifetime if she needs it. "

― Suzan Tisdale , Isle of the Blessed