The three women waited. No one had spoken for what seemed an hour. Anna thought she would scream out of frustration. Why hadn’t she defied custom and gone herself? Why was it women were relegated to sitting in reception rooms waiting while men went about such lethal business?
The painted porcelain clock on the mantle held her captive. Half of an hour remained before the assigned time of ten o’clock. The timepiece ticked away slowly, so slowly Anna thought it was surely running down. She came to realize that she was not the only one to note every tick of the minute hand; her aunt’s and cousin’s eyes swept to and from the mantle at regular intervals, like search lanterns.
What if Jan kills Antoni? she thought. What then? Would her husband not come between her and Jan in death? And if he lives? What will have been solved by this primitive rite of honor?
And what if Jan is killed? Her mind went blank. Life without him was unthinkable. Even if they were never to marry, life without Jan seemed no life at all. She found herself catching her breath at the possibility. She should have gone, she thought, she should have gone.
At ten minutes before ten, the front door knocker sounded. The three women looked up in wonder, each moving her gaze from one to the other. What news could this be? The duel was only now about to take place, and then it might be two hours before they heard the outcome.
In a few minutes Lutisha ushered a man into the room.
Anna looked up to find Baron Michał Kolbi striding toward her. She tried to disguise her astonishment with a smile. She had hardly given him or his patriot friends a thought since arriving back in Warsaw. There had been no time.
She stood to greet him and introduced him to her aunt. Zofia, of course, needed no introduction, and her silent nod to him now indicated that his chilly attitude toward her overtures at the patriot celebration still rankled her.
Beaming, he turned to Anna. “I thought you dead, Countess, despite my measures. Praise God! I am so happy to see you.”
Anna smiled. “It seems I have more lives than a cat, Michał. Will you be seated?” The baron brought up a chair to the women’s circle and they all sat, Anna stealing a look at the clock as she did so. This was a happy distraction, but merely a distraction nonetheless. There were only minutes now.
“What measures?” Zofia asked.
Only now did Anna process what he had said. Despite my measures…
“Anna was right in her presentiments about Antoni,” Michał said. “After she left for St. Petersburg, I set to work and it did not take long to unravel the man’s plot.”
“Plot?” the countess asked.
The baron’s gaze shifted to Countess Gronska. “I questioned after those men who had been conscripted to take your niece to St. Petersburg. Her letter to me raised my suspicions. I found a man, a Russian, who had turned down the job because…”
Anna suspected that he had shocking news to relate and that he paused now out of deference to the Countess Gronska.
“Yes,” the countess said, “do go on.”
He nodded and drew a breath. “Because Grawlinski had no intention that Anna get to St. Petersburg at all. The carriage was to be taken to Opole, to his family farm, but Anna was not to arrive… alive.”
Countess Gronska gasped. “It’s true, then. My God, it’s true!”
“So, Antoni,” Zofia said in a strangely flat manner, “did, indeed, mean to kill Anna.”
Both the countess and Zofia turned to Anna, who seemed to be taking the news with silent equanimity. “And it was,” Anna said, “your men who attempted to take me from the Russians?”
The baron nodded.
“God take their good and brave souls,” Anna said.
“I’ve been scouting out Antoni for weeks, but he’s an elusive devil. I’ve been as far as Opole and Częstochowa and have always come up just a step behind him. I do know he’s now here in Warsaw. I intend to call him out and take a just revenge. I take it he hasn’t shown here as yet?”
The women exchanged glances, suddenly remembering where Antoni and Jan were at that moment and what they were about. Before Anna could even shift her eyes to glance at the clock, it struck ten.
Antoni Grawlinski’s shot whipped past Jan’s left ear. He had meant to kill, Jan realized. He had aimed for the head. But he had missed.
Jan took in a mouthful of air now and aimed his own pistol. He felt confident that he could kill him—the heart was a more sensible target than the head—and yet, without solid evidence that damned him as Anna’s would-be murderer…
He took his aim now, moving away from the heart, and fired.
Antoni was struck in the upper right shoulder. He remained standing. His left hand went protectively to the wound. There was blood on his hand when he withdrew it, a small amount. He looked up at Jan and smiled, as if to say, You may have come off the better today, but not by much.
I’ve had my chance, Jan thought, and I may regret not having taken it. He may yet be a threat to Anna.
At that moment an explosion rang out. Another pistol shot! In the blur of a few seconds Jan saw Antoni’s chest open up and spill out a geyser of blood. His eyes enlarged in surprise and pain, and he crumpled to the ground.
“There! There!” Józef screamed, pointing to where a cloud of smoke hovered near a large oak. “It came from there!”
One of Antoni’s friends ran to his aid. Jan and the others rushed to the spot where the foliage had concealed the sniper. Jan remembered hearing a noise from that direction, the noise that had put off his concentration. He took his extra pistol from Artur as they ran. But they heard the horse’s hooves before they could get a clear line of vision. There had been a path of sorts, after all, and with all their horses many yards behind them, the man’s getaway was a near certainty.
Still, Jan quickly aimed his loaded pistol and took his shot, its sound reverberating loudly through the forest. Its mark, however, already well out of range, cleanly escaped.
They returned to Antoni Grawlinski’s lifeless form.