For Love or Money Book

"La vengeance est un mets que l'on doit manger froid." (Revenge is a dish that should be eaten cold.)

--Credited to Charles Talleyrand, French diplomat (1754–1838).

Revenge and a Cinderella-type plot make a great combination in These Old Shades, one of Georgette Heyer's more well-known historical novels, set in the later 1700's.



The half-French Duke of Avon is walking down the street when a small body hurtles into him. He looks into the face of this young urchin and suddenly sees the potential for taking revenge on the man who has been his mortal enemy for twenty years. So he buys the curly red-headed young orphan off the boy's loutish older brother, takes him home and cleans him up, and presents him to Paris society as his new page. *Some limited spoilers follow*

It soon turns out that this boy is not a boy after all, but an impish 19 year old girl. So Léon becomes Léonie, as the Duke takes her to his sister in England, charging her to teach Léonie manners and train her to act as a young girl in high society should.



Various shenanigans ensue, as Léonie resists fitting herself into the mold society expects, and the Comte Saint-Vire, the Duke's old enemy, takes some drastic and potentially lethal steps to try to avoid the noose he can see headed his way.

I've been tempted to knock this book down a star or two for a couple of things in the plot that really irk me: The twenty year age difference between the Duke and Léonie (he calls her "infant," for heaven's sake), which everyone in his family handwaves because they think the two fit so well together. The insistence that "blood will out": everyone can tell Léonie is well-born because of her looks and natural grace, while a boy born to peasants but raised in high society still looks and acts boorish and wants nothing so much as to leave Paris and live on a farm.

But in the end, this book was just so much darn fun to read that I have to award all the stars. Léonie is small and passionate and absolutely hilarious, given to calling people names and flying off the handle when they anger her: "He is a pig-person. I hate him. I am glad that I bit him, and threw the coffee over him."Justin, the jaded Duke of Avon, is one of those mastermind type of characters I adore, weaving his revenge plot while everyone else around him tries to figure out what his intentions are and why he's doing what he is. And yet the suave Duke gets tripped up by this irreverent young girl he's taken in, who sees him clearly but adores him nevertheless. He acts languid and casual around others, but every once in a while you see his true determination and strength of character show through his posing. He's also snarky and sarcastic and has a dry sense of humor:"M'sieur, you will think I come upon a strange errand, but I have a wife!" [De Faugenac] beamed at Avon, and nodded several times.

"I felicitate you, m'sieur," said Avon gravely.

"Yes, yes! A wife! It will explain all."

"It always does," answered his Grace. . . .

"She eats her heart out for your so lovely, your so enchanting, your so elegant--"

Avon held up his hand. "M'sieur, my policy has ever been to eschew married women."

"But -- but -- what do you mean, m'sieur? My wife pines for your page. . . She cannot sleep a night until she knows that he is hers."

"It seems that madame is destined to spend many sleepless nights," said Avon.The humorous dialogue, mixed with a suspenseful story of revenge and the cat and mouse game between the Duke of Avon and his enemy, the Comte Saint-Vire, was just a pleasure to read.

Interesting note: This book is a semi-sequel to Heyer's first novel, The Black Moth (which is old enough that you can get it for free on Gutenberg and other sites). Apparently Heyer wanted to do a sequel but the characters didn't quite fit what she wanted to do in this book. So she renamed them and changed some of their characteristics and backstory, so that the new characters are "shades" of the old ones. Hence the name of this novel, which came from a Victorian-era poem that appears at the front of this book in some editions. The poem reads in part:

Whereas with these old shades of mine,
Their ways and dress delight me;
And should I trip by word or line,
They cannot well indict me.--Austin Dobson: Epilogue to Eighteenth Century VignettesAll the stars!