Twilight

Award-winning novelist Katherine Mosby examines the complex landscape of adultery while depicting a woman's unlikely blossoming in the face of war. Lavinia Gibbs defies social convention and family expectations in New York in the 1930s when she breaks off a passionless engagement to a prominent banker. Instead of surrendering to an invisible spinsterhood, Lavinia moves to Paris, where, on the verge of World War II, her sexual and political awakening collide in an unforgettable tale.

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Twilight
A Novel

Chapter One

It would be misleading to say that the course of Lavinia's life was diverted by a kiss, or that a chance remark would change the continent on which she lived, although both things were true. Lavinia Gibbs was not known for beingeither sentimental or a helpless romantic. There was nothing helpless about Lavinia at all. She was, in fact, among the most practical members of her graduating class at Miss Dillwater's Academy, a trait much commented upon in her 1917 yearbook. Born at the turn of the century, Lavinia seemed always older than her years, but this was due to her reserve ratherthan her wisdom.

At boarding school, she had been told about a kiss the janitor's son had stolen from Maybel Skeffler, a senior who had excelled at archery until her feminine charms became so ample they impaired her ability to pull back a clean shot with the bow. All the girls had talked about the kiss in hushedtones, in the safety of the darkness, from their narrow cots,recounting Maybel's description long after she had beentaken home. It had been a revelation that was disturbing anddelightful in equal measure: the heat of his lips had made herswoon "down there." Afterward, even though the janitor's sonwas forbidden to set foot on the school grounds, just the sightof his father pushing a rake against a gravel path was enoughto make Maybel Skeffler dizzy and liable to cry for no reasonshe could explain to her teachers.

Once, on a trip to Europe the summer Lavinia was thirteen,she had watched a couple embracing in a damp alleywaybelow the window of her hotel bathroom. It was thewoman's moan that had caused Lavinia to hoist herself out ofher bath and stand, dripping and soapy, on the closed lid ofthe toilet from which she could see, when she stood on hertoes, the figures blending their bodies in the dank shadowsthat seemed to lick at them, swallowing now a chin or browor shoulder.

By the time Miss Kaye, Lavinia's governess, knocked onthe bathroom door, issuing directives about the attire Laviniawas expected to wear to dinner that evening, Lavinia hadalready been marked by the moment as surely as if she hadbeen branded. Remembering the way the woman's voicehad fluttered upward in the night, carrying a breathlessurgency, Lavinia was flooded with enough jealousy andshame to make her ears burn.

That evening, before she joined her family in the hotel'srococo dining room, Lavinia spent an unusually long timeexamining herself in the standing mirror that filled a cornerof the suite she was sharing with Miss Kaye. Lavinia had beentold from time to time that she had beautiful eyes and lustroushair, but the very fact that those two features had beensingled out for comment signified to her that nothing else wasworthy of praise.

Her mother had been a great beauty in her youth andeven now, aged by unspecified "female" illnesses having to dowith the birthing of her four children, Eliza Gibbs possessedan austere eminence that could still cause an appreciativemurmur to sweep through a room when she entered, usuallya little late and always impeccably attired.

Lavinia recognized in her own face the sharp, almostfierce, features of her father, a man whose distinguished careeron Wall Street was only furthered by his passing resemblanceto a peregrine falcon. It had given him an air of confidencethat men respected and women found attractive in a vaguelyprimitive way; his was the face of a warrior and suggested avitality and intelligence that were rarely questioned.

"Of my two girls," her mother was fond of saying, "youwere given brains and Grace was given beauty and you shouldboth be grateful for having been given any gifts at all, as thereare plenty of girls who have neither. Besides, you are a Gibbs.Your name alone guarantees you a standing in society thatmost will never attain."

While those words were not comforting, Lavinia hadenough horse sense to accept the truth they contained, evenif it was bitter. Miss Kaye was more diplomatic: "A womancan do a great deal to commend herself to the opposite sex."Unfortunately, most of the young men Lavinia encounteredat cotillions and debutante balls were less moved by thevirtues of good posture, good manners, and good breedingthan Miss Kaye supposed.

It was true that Lavinia was never a wallflower, the wayJuliette Langhorn was, or Ruth Marshall, girls about whomunkind jokes were made by boys and girls alike, but if Laviniawas not at a loss for dance partners, it had as much to do withher sense of humor and her capacity to follow even the weakestlead as with her ability to be "alluring." Occasionally MissKaye allowed Lavinia to wear scent on her neck and wouldcoil Lavinia's black hair in elaborate coiffures that showed itto advantage. Miss Kaye also had eyedrops from Germanythat dilated the pupils, thereby highlighting Lavinia's bestfeature.

But the fellows who flirted with Lavinia never steered heracross the dance floor to the balcony where, unchaperoned,they could importune her for a kiss. Her sister, Grace, olderby two years, complained incessantly about forward boys andhow she'd had to slap two different suitors. By Grace's eighteenthbirthday she had rejected one proposal of marriageand was on the verge of accepting another.

Grace, moreover, was petite in stature, and beforeLavinia had begun to menstruate she was already taller andmore broad-shouldered than her older sister, a fact both herbrothers teased her about with cruel delight ...

Excerpted from Twilight by Katherine Mosby
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