He mounted his own stairs, rubbing at the fire in his chest. He’d throw the bastard out himself if it killed him. He didn’t have far to go. Entering the great hall, he could hear men’s voices coming from the front room where Thomas’s body had been laid out.

Silas swung the door open, banging it against the wall.

Pye and Bennet looked up from where they stood near the table bearing Thomas’s charred corpse. Bennet deliberately turned away from his father. “I can go with you, but I’ll have to see Thomas properly buried first.” His voice was a whispered rasp from the fire.

“Of course. My horse will need to rest after last night, anyway,” Pye replied.

“Now wait just a minute,” Silas interrupted the cozy pair. “You’re not going anywhere, Bennet. Especially not with this bastard.”

“I’ll go where I want.”

“No, you’ll not,” Silas said. The burning pain was spreading to his arm. “You’re the heir to Granville now. You’ll stay right here if you want a penny more from me.”

Bennet finally looked up. Silas had never seen such hatred in another man’s eyes. “I don’t want a penny or anything else from you. I’m traveling to London as soon as Thomas has been decently buried.”

“With him?” Silas jerked his head in Pye’s direction, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “So your baseborn blood has begun to tell, has it?”

Both men turned.

Silas grinned in satisfaction. “Your mother was a whore, you know that, don’t you? I wasn’t even the first she’d cuckolded John Pye with. That woman had an itch that just couldn’t be scratched by one man. If she hadn’t died so soon, she’d be spreading her legs in the gutter right now, just to feel a cock.”

“She may have been a faithless lying whore, but she was a saint compared to you,” Pye said.

Silas laughed. He couldn’t help it. What a joke! The boy must have no idea. He gasped for breath. “Can’t you do sums, lad? Must not be something they teach in the poorhouse, eh?” Another chuckle shook him. “Well let me spell it out for you, nice and slow. Your mother came here before you were conceived. You’re as likely my son as John Pye’s. More like, the way she panted after me.”

“No.” Strangely, Pye showed no reaction. “You may well have planted the seed in my mother, but John Pye and only John Pye was my father.”

“Father,” Silas spat. “I doubt John Pye was even capable of getting a woman with child.”

For a moment Silas thought Pye would go for his throat, and his heart leapt painfully. But the bastard turned aside and walked to the window, as if Silas were not worth the effort.