‘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.’