Palm Beach [antikvár]

Everyone agreed it was the grandest and most beautiful wedding in Palm Beach history, but nearly everybody also felt that something was terribly, dreadfully wrong. Whatever that was, it was nowhere near the surface. Rather, it bubbled around in the collective unconscious, mysterious and threatening, shadowy but undeniable. The alien feeling seemed to lurk in the cool, formidably air-conditioned atmosphere of the old Mizner mansion, scurrying around in the dark corners of the carved wood ceilings, insinuating its presence along the sombre Spanish tiled corridors and the bougainvillaea-bedecked cloisters. Nobody who felt it could ignore it and yet it was too intangible to describe - an uninvited guest at the wedding feast. Lisa Blass and Bobby Stansfield were unaware of the disturbing undercurrents. It was their wedding day. They were two people who in short minutes would become one and the aura of their mutual happiness insulated them effortlessly from the mists of dread which swirled round about. They stood close together, like the intertwined figures on the top of a child's music box, preparing cheerfully to dance their way through an eternity of togetherness. Occasionally, as if in mutual reassurance that this was not the unreality of a dream, their hands would reach out for the comfort of touch. To hold is to have,' their gestures seemed to say. Lisa Blass squeezed hard on her fiance's hand and leaned in towards the strong shoulders. 'Not long now,' she whispered. But it had been so very, very long. Almost as long as