“Convincing” entailed screaming at her, slapping her about, starving her, locking her in her room, and finally ordering Percy to get her with child so that she'd have to marry him.

“I'd rather bring it up a bastard than a Prewitt,” Caroline muttered.

“What was that?” Percy asked.

“Nothing.”

“You're going to have to leave, you know,” he said, abruptly changing the subject.

“Believe me, that fact is quite clear.”

“Father told me that if I don't get you with child, he'll take care of it himself.”

Caroline very nearly threw up. “I beg your pardon?” she said, her voice uncharacteristically shaky. Even Percy was preferable to Oliver.

“I don't know where you can go, but you need to disappear until your twenty-first birthday, which is … when? … soon, I think.”

“Six weeks,” Caroline whispered. “Six weeks exactly.”

“Can you do it?”

“Hide?”

Percy nodded.

“I'll have to, won't I? I'll need funds, though. I have a bit of pin money, but I don't have access to my inheritance until my birthday.”

Percy winced as Caroline peeled the cloth away from his shoulder. “I can give you a little,” he said.

“I'll pay you back. With interest.”

“Good. You'll have to leave tonight.”

Caroline looked around the room. “But the mess … We have to clean up the blood.”

“No, leave it. Better I let you get away because you shot me than because I simply botched the plan.”

“One of these days you're going to have to stand up to your father.”

“It'll be easier with you gone. There is a perfectly nice girl two towns over I've a mind to court. She's quiet and biddable, and not nearly as skinny as you.”

Caroline immediately pitied the poor girl. “I hope everything works out for you,” she lied.

“No, you don't. But I don't care. Really doesn't matter what you think, as long as you're gone.”

“Do you know, Percy, but that is precisely how I feel about you?”

Amazingly, Percy smiled, and for the first time in the eighteen months since Caroline had come to live with the youngest branch of the Prewitts, she felt a sense of kinship with this boy who was so nearly her age.

“Where will you go?” he asked.

“Better you don't know. That way your father can't badger it out of you.”

“Good point.”

“Besides, I haven't a clue. I haven't any relations, you know. That is how I ended up here with you. But after ten years of defending myself against my ever-so-caring guardians, I should think I should be able to manage in the outside world for six weeks.”

“If any female can do it, it would be you.”

Caroline raised her brows. “Why Percy, was that a compliment? I'm stunned.”

“It wasn't even close to being a compliment. What kind of man would want a woman who could get along quite well without him?”

“The kind who could get along quite well without his father,” Caroline retorted.

Percy scowled as he flicked his head toward his bureau. “Open up the top drawer … no, the one on the right …”