‘We’re wasting time,’ Fern snapped. ‘Are you coming with me to find Lizzy?’
‘No.’ Quinn shrugged expressive shoulders. ‘There’s work that might need doing here.’ He looked across to where Sam was still in deep distress, his lean and harshly contoured face growing grim.
‘I’ll check Sam before I go,’ Fern told him. ‘I’ll take him home to his parents.’ She stared around helplessly. ‘They seem to have gone already.’
‘I’ll check Sam,’ Quinn said brusquely. ‘He’s the least of our troubles. It’s not the fit young men I’m worried about.’ The laughter had completely faded from Quinn Gallagher’s voice.
‘There are others we need to be worried about. Lizzy Hurst might have thought she was doing nothing but playing a sadistic joke, but there are a couple of your wedding guests whom this could really hurt. Frank Reid’s elderly and diabetic. As far as I can see he’s gone home alone-and gone in a hurry. I’ll go there now.’
Fern drew in her breath. She had forgotten Frank.
Who else? She forced her mind to run through the list of guests. ‘There’s Pete Harny,’ she said finally. ‘You’ve been here for six months, haven’t you, so I guess you know he’s haemophiliac. He was there at lunchtime and I think he ate the oysters-but his parents will phone if he starts haemorrhaging.’
‘His parents will phone if they’re capable-if they’re not in too much trouble themselves-and I’d rather treat him before he starts haemorrhaging.’ Quinn’s eyes were suddenly cold as consequences started flooding through both their minds. ‘What a foolish girl! What a stupid, stupid thing to do.’
‘She’s in love,’ Fern said bleakly. ‘Anything’s supposed to be excused if you’re in love.’
‘Well, you’re a bride and I can’t see you poisoning people,’ Quinn retorted.
‘But I’m not in love!’
The words were said before Fern had time to stop them. They hung in the warm evening air, as incongruous as everything else that had happened this day. As incongruous as the white satin…
Quinn Gallagher stared down at her for a very long moment. Fern stared straight back, her huge eyes defiant. They looked a picture, the two of them; the bride in a floating vision of white satin and the muscular man by her side, virile, capable and commanding in the deep black of his tailored dinner suit.
Bride and groom-from a mockery of a wedding!
‘Then, would you mind telling me what we’re doing here?’ Quinn demanded finally. ‘If you’re not in love what in heaven’s name are you doing playing brides and making island girls so jealous they commit criminal injury?’
‘I mean…I mean I’m not in love like Lizzy,’ Fern stammered. ‘I…Sam and I are getting married for sensible reasons-not for stupid, romantic love.’
Silence.
This was crazy.
She was going mad. She’d have to get out of here.
Fern lifted the folds of her white skirts from the ground and cast a doubtful look across at Sam. Sam would just have to cope with Quinn Gallagher’s ministrations. She had to find Lizzy.
She had to get away from Quinn Gallagher. He was unsettling her more than anything else was.
‘Look, I have to go,’ she stammered. Quinn Gallagher was watching her as a bemused hawk would have watched a tiny chicken’s futile attempts at escape. ‘The sooner I find Lizzy the better.’ Fern took two hasty steps down from the church door. ‘I’ll telephone if I find out anything,’ she called as she backed away. ‘Where…where can I reach you?’
‘Mobile phone.’ The hawk, it seemed, was releasing his prey. Quinn lifted the machine from the belt under his jacket and held it up. ‘The island telephonist has the number.’
‘Can you…? You will check Sam before you go? Please…?’
‘I’ll check your beloved,’ Quinn said grimly. ‘Just make it worth my while by finding Lizzy fast.’
Fern nodded, lifting her skirts high and breaking into a run.
Bridal chicken in full flight…
She needed a car.
There was only one car available in front of the church-the big white limousine in which her uncle had been planning to drive the newly married pair to the reception. It stood deserted, beribboned in white satin, white net over the back seat and a set of bride and groom dolls smiling at the world from the back shelf.
The dolls must be the only happy couple on the island!
The keys were in the ignition.
It was all Fern needed.
Ignoring the impulse to pick up the dolls and throw them as far as she could, Fern wedged herself into the driver’s seat. The hoops of her bridal gown welled up around the steering column.
Good grief…
Get on with it, Fern…
She started the car and put her satined foot on the accelerator, all the while crazily aware of the dark figure on the church steps, watching…
She could feel Quinn Gallagher’s eyes still on her until she rounded the bend and was out of sight of the church.
It was all she could do not to glance back.
It was the end of her wedding.
For good?
That was a crazy notion. They could try again tomorrow, Fern thought, and closed her eyes at the idea of the reorganisation her aunt would insist on.
Aunt Maud wouldn’t be well enough tomorrow. Or the next day either, Fern thought savagely. Fern’s aunt had seemed weak and out of sorts since Fern had arrived home on the island and Fern had fretted that Maud seemed to be ageing early. Lizzy Hurst should have calculated the effects her horrid oysters would have on people like Aunt Maud.
Quinn would be learning the effects of the poison on the island’s invalids right now, Fern thought bleakly, and for a wild moment she wished that she was driving beside him to check on the two islanders they were concerned about.
‘I should be wishing I was staying with Sam,’ she corrected herself, and knew that she didn’t wish it in the least. Sam would be devastated.
She swore at the road in front and shoved her foot harder on the accelerator. The bridal car sped forward with undignified haste.
What a mess.
How could things possibly get any worse than this?
CHAPTER TWO
SHE shouldn’t have asked that question.
Three minutes later Fern pulled up outside the home of her aunt and uncle and raced inside. She had two minutes to climb into some jeans, she told herself, but she got no further than the front door before she knew that the worst was here with a vengeance.
‘Fern…’
It was her uncle’s voice, hoarse with fear, and he was yelling from the upstairs bedroom.
Fern heard the fear.
Uncle Al wasn’t a man to express fear lightly.
Fern took the stairs three at a time, her bridal gown hoisted almost to her waist.
Dear God…No!
This wasn’t food poisoning. Fern’s medical training snapped into place as she stared down in horror at her aunt.
Fern’s aunt had collapsed. Maudie Rycroft was a limp, prostrate form huddled against the wall of the bedroom, her wonderful, flowery wedding hat tipped crazily down over her face. She wasn’t moving.
Fern sank to her knees, satin wedding gown flowing out around her, and searched frantically for a pulse.
Nothing. There was no pulse in Maud’s wrist. None in the carotid artery.
‘What happened?’ Fern was already clearing the airway, sliding her aunt down to lay her flat on the floor and give herself room to work. Maud’s crazy hat was tossed aside, unnoticed.
‘She was ill,’ Fern’s uncle stammered. ‘Like everyone else, she was sick as a dog. Maud was sick once outside the church and again just now.’
The elderly farmer was literally wringing his hands. He stared down at his wife and his face was as bloodless as Maud’s. ‘And she was so upset, Fern,’ he whispered. ‘Your aunt was sobbing and sobbing, thinking all her plans for a lovely wedding were ruined. And then she came out of the bathroom and said her chest felt tight and there was pain going down her arm and she just…she just fell over…I couldn’t even catch her before she fell…’