The second book in the Prescription: Love series, 1996

A BRIDE’S thoughts on her wedding day…

That she looked perfectly ridiculous!

Dr Fern Rycroft smoothed her cloud of white satin and took three deep breaths. Uncle Al was waiting. Sam was waiting. Indeed, it seemed that the whole island was waiting for Fern to do the right thing.

The sensible thing. Many Sam Hubert…

Well, if only they’d be content with this, Fern thought wryly. Fat chance! There were two things that Fern should do to prove herself worthy of the islanders’ regard. One was to marry Sam. The other was to come home to stay.

She and Sam both.

Well, they’d be waiting a long time! Fern’s green eyes grew bleak behind the veil. Live on Barega again? Never!

‘Ready, Fern?’

Uncle Al was fidgeting by his niece’s side, worry etched on his kindly face.

Fern could guess what he was thinking. Fern Rycroft might be twenty-eight and a trained doctor of medicine but, with her huge green eyes, close-cropped, flamecoloured curls and smattering of freckles, she looked very much the same as the tear-stained orphan that Uncle Al had carried home thirteen years ago. Her uncle worried about her as if she was still a child.

But Fern couldn’t guess her uncle’s deeper worry. Albert Rycroft dredged up a reassuring smile for the lovely girl by his side but he saw the same desolation in Fern that had been with his niece through all the years since her family were killed. The same sense of helplessness behind the laughter and the same belief that life was not to be trusted…

Fern’s infectious chuckle, her cheerfulness and bright smile had endeared her to the islanders from the moment Albert Rycroft had brought his niece home. ‘Our Tonic’, the islanders called her, and when Fern had announced her intention of studying medicine they’d joked,