“Don't say it,” she warned. “I still have a gun.”

“You wouldn't use it,” he gasped, coughing and clutching at his bloody shoulder.

“I beg your pardon, but the evidence seems to indicate otherwise.”

Percy's thin lips clamped into a straight line. He swore viciously, and then lifted his furious gaze to Caroline. “I told my father I didn't want to marry you,” he hissed. “God! Can you imagine? Having to live with you for the rest of my life? I should go bloody insane. If you didn't kill me first, that is.”

“If you didn't want to marry me you shouldn't have tried to force yourself upon me.”

He shrugged, then howled when the movement sparked pain in his shoulder. He looked quite furious as he said, “You've quite a bit of money, but do you know, I don't think you're worth it.”

“Kindly tell that to your father,” Caroline snapped.

“He said he'd disinherit me if I didn't marry you.”

“And you couldn't stand up to him for once in your pathetic life?”

Percy growled at being called pathetic, but in his weakened condition he couldn't do much about the insult. “I could go to America,” he muttered. “Surely savages have to be a better option than you.”

Caroline ignored him. She and Percy had been at odds since she had come to live with the Prewitts a year and a half earlier. Percy was quite under his father's thumb, and the only time he showed any spirit was when Oliver quit the house. Unfortunately, his spirit was usually mean and small and, in Caroline's opinion, rather dull.

“I suppose I'm going to have to save you now,” she grumbled. “You're certainly not worth the gallows.”

“You're too kind.”

Caroline shook a pillow out of its case, wadded up the cloth—the highest quality linen, she noted, probably purchased with her money—and pressed it against Percy's wound. “We have to stop the bleeding,” she said.

“It appears to have slowed down,” Percy admitted.

“Did the bullet go straight through?”

“I don't know. Hurts like the devil, but I don't know if it's supposed to hurt more if it goes through or gets stuck in the muscle.”

“I imagine they're both quite painful,” Caroline said, lifting the wadded pillowcase and examining the wound. She turned him gently and looked at his back. “I think it went through. You've a hole in the back of your shoulder as well.”

“Trust you to injure me twice.”

“You lured me into your room under the pretense of needing a cup of tea for a head cold,” she snapped, “and then you tried to rape me! What did you expect?”

“Why the hell did you bring a gun?”

“I always carry a gun,” she replied. “I have since … well, never you mind.”

“I wouldn't have gone through with it,” he muttered.

“How was I to know that?”

“Well, you know I've never liked you.”

Caroline pressed her makeshift bandage against Percy's bloody shoulder with perhaps a touch more force than was necessary. “What I know,” she spat out, “is that you and your father have always quite liked my inheritance.”