@Jellby -- I wonder if you might be able to work something out using a two-column table (I know... tables... ewwww!) to create a fake "adjacent" cap. I'm just spitballing here, and it might not be possible, but theoretically it could work. The table cells could keep the cap quarantined from the text. Of course, it would probably break in lots of devices.
I've seen adjacent caps discussed in a few blogs about InDesign, but not often for CSS. This link
http://webdesign.about.com/od/exampl...p_examples.htm has some CSS samples. If I get some time, I'll do some fiddling too.