[citation needed] Fortune favours Justin Alastair, the notorious Duke of Avon, casting in his way, one Paris night, the means to revenge himself on his enemy, the Comte de Saint-Vire.

Avon literally collides with an abused boy, Léon Bonnard, whose red hair, deep blue eyes and black eyebrows proclaim him a child of the Comte.

Léonie is wildly devoted to Avon, seeing him as her saviour from a life of abuse, rather than as dissolute and scandalous, as the rest of the fashionable world views him.

[1] Devil's Cub (1932) follows These Old Shades with the adventures of Avon's and Léonie's son Dominic, a shockingly selfish and indulged young man who elopes with a poor relation of one of his father's friends.

[citation needed] These Old Shades was itself originally intended to be a sequel to Heyer's first novel The Black Moth (1921), which would redeem the devilish Belmanoir.

But as The Black Moth was a melodrama and a sequel per se would not work in with the plot, she decided to make the new novel stand alone, renamed many characters and made them 'shades' of their former selves.

[2] After These Old Shades became popular despite its release during the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, Heyer determined that publicity was not necessary for good sales, thenceforth refusing to grant interviews.