Read Online The King’s Justice by Katherine Kurtz - Free Book Online Page B

have something to tell you,” Morgan said softly, the grey eyes dark with compassion. “I wish you could have learned it under happier circumstances, but perhaps it will help to ease your sorrow now. I think you will not be displeased.”
    Curious despite his grief, Kelson turned his gaze on Duncan, who had laid his hand on Dhugal’s shoulder. The sedative was already blurring his ability to make his eyes focus, but his thinking was still reasonably clear and would remain so for several minutes, he knew.
    â€œDhugal and I made a marvelous discovery before we left for the cathedral this morning,” Duncan said, smiling as Dhugal glanced at him and grinned. “It has to do with the cloak clasp he’s wearing. I believe you’ve admired it at various times?”
    For the first time Kelson noticed that although Dhugal had changed from border tartans to funereal black, he still wore the fist-sized lion-headed brooch that he said had been his mother’s.
    â€œWhat about it?” he asked, glancing back at Duncan.
    Duncan’s grin abruptly matched Dhugal’s. “Well, it’s a McLain badge—see the closed eyes?—the McLain sleeping lion. My father had it made for me. I gave it to my wife on our wedding night.”
    â€œYour wife …?” Kelson murmured, stunned.
    â€œTo Dhugal’s mother, as it turned out,” Duncan went on happily. “You see, Dhugal is my son.”
    Even now, Kelson remembered few further details of that evening, though later explorations of the happy news brought him a joy that did, indeed, ease a little of the shock of Sidana’s death. But as he flashed on the somber days of her lying-in-state and funeral, and his visits since then to the simple tomb in the crypt where she slept with other of Gwynedd’s former kings and queens, he was jarred back to the present by her name on his mother’s lips.
    â€œâ€¦ cannot grieve forever over this Sidana,” she was saying. “You hardly knew the girl. You have a duty to take another bride. That’s why I’ve come back from the convent: to help you find one. A suitable wife can help to expiate the curse I’ve placed upon you.”
    â€œAnd what, pray tell, was not ‘suitable’ about the bride I chose?” Kelson said irritably, setting his cup aside with a hollow clunk. “Even by your standards, Mother, Sidana was ‘suitable’ in every respect: princess of a noble house whose union with our own might have forged a lasting peace; young and beautiful; almost certainly able to provide healthy heirs.
    â€œNor was she either Deryni or in sympathy with Deryni. And her own brother killed her, with a solid, reliable, un-Deryni knife!”
    â€œYou know that isn’t what I meant—” Jehana began.
    â€œNo, don’t lecture me about ‘suitable’ brides, Mother,” Kelson went on. “I was prepared to do my dynastic duty, and chose my bride for all the ‘right’ reasons. You must pardon me if I do not seem overeager to leap into the matrimonial sea again, quite so quickly!”
    Jehana shook her head, lips compressed in a thin line. “Not now, of course, Kelson. But soon—”
    â€œNot too soon, Mother. In case you’ve forgotten, I have a war to fight this summer—one of the little legacies of my brief foray into matrimony. And as if the Mearan rebellion were not already far enough advanced, her family now blame me for Sidana’s death as well as Llewell’s. The dispute over Mearan sovereignty has taken on the added dimension of a blood feud, despite the fact that it was Llewell who killed Sidana—not I—and that Llewell was executed for his crime of murder, not because I particularly wanted him dead.”
    â€œYou would have to have done away with him eventually, in any case,” Jehana said coldly. “So long as he lived, he would have remained a threat. Any issue of