These Old Shades's greatest asset, however, is the charming Léonie: beautiful, brave, and loyal to a fault, with a fondness for swordplay and pistols and a delightfully incomplete grasp of the English language. What both types share is Heyer's fine storytelling and encyclopedic knowledge of Regency mores and manners-her books are the next best thing to a time machine. Earlier works such as These Old Shades, however, tend to be darker, tinged with mystery and overshadowed by very real menace.

Georgette Heyer's historical romances tend to fall into two different camps: later novels such as Cotillion, False Colours, and Sylvester feature larger-than-life comic characters and romantic pairings more akin to Beatrice and Benedick than Hero and Claudio. Set in pre-Revolutionary France, These Old Shades follows a twisting course as young Léon (or is it Léonie?) is swept up in a dangerous mystery: how to account for the page's amazing resemblance to the sinister Compte de Saint Vire, for example and why will this man go to any lengths to get the youth in his power?

It soon becomes clear, however, that Léon is not what he seems, and that Avon has an ulterior motive for bringing him into his household. On a whim, Avon buys the boy and makes him his page. On this particular evening, the dangerous rake crosses paths with Léon, a red-headed youth of low birth who is fleeing a certain beating at his brutal brother's hands. The gentleman in question is Justin Alastair, the Duke of Avon, known by friends and enemies alike as Satanas-the devil. A long purple cloak, rose-lined, hung from his shoulders and was allowed to fall carelessly back from his dress, revealing a full-skirted coat of purple satin, heavily laced with gold a waistcoat of flowered silk faultless small clothes and a lavish sprinkling of jewels on his cravat and breast. He walked mincingly, for the red heels of his shoes were very high. A gentleman was strolling down a side street in Paris, on his way back from the house of one Madame de Verchoureux.

These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer