These Old Shades

Justin, Duke of Avon

Avon moves through Parisian society as a master of irony and manipulation, his motives as opaque to his friends as to his enemies. He acquires the boy Léon with suspicious ease, installs him as a ward, and watches with amusement as the page becomes the toast of Paris — while refusing to explain why he cares. His friends whisper that he has never looked at anyone the way he looks at Léonie, and the mystery of what he knows about her origins drives the plot's central engine.

Léonie de Bonnard

Léonie enters the story disguised as a boy, quick with a blade and quicker with a retort, and is swept into Avon's household where she blossoms into a beauty with no memory of her true parentage. She adores Avon with a devotion she cannot name, yet bristles at the idea that she is too lowborn to wed him — a tension Lady Fanny gleefully stokes. Her unguarded recollections of Versailles and her striking resemblance to someone the Comte de Saint-Vire fears make her the puzzle everyone is trying to solve.

Hugh Davenant

Hugh Davenant is the rare man who can tease Avon about his ruling passions and still be trusted with his secrets, moving between London and the Continent as his friend's discreet agent. He is the one who notices Léon's suspiciously short memory and the odd gaps in the boy's story, and who later watches Léonie's transformation with affectionate concern. His dry amusement and unshakeable loyalty anchor the novel's more extravagant characters, and his observations often tell the reader what Avon will not.

Lady Fanny Marling

Lady Fanny Marling moves through Parisian society with an eye for a petticoat of gold net and an ear for the latest scandal, and she takes the bewildered Léonie under her wing with genuine warmth. She reads Avon's feelings for his ward long before he admits them, teasing Léonie about jewels and duchesses until the girl bursts into tears — then regrets her runaway tongue. Her blend of frivolity and real kindness gives the novel its social texture and pushes Léonie toward confronting what she feels for Monseigneur.

Comte de Saint-Vire

Saint-Vire arrives at Merivale with a story about a schooner and a friend named Chalmer that no one quite believes, and his composure cracks the moment Léonie's name is mentioned. He probes for news of Avon's whereabouts and the girl's presentation with a hunger that alarms his hosts, and his old scandal with the Alastair family surfaces in Merivale's memory. His quiet menace makes him the shadow pursuing Léonie across the novel's middle chapters, and his fear of what she might remember drives the plot's central conflict.

Léon Bonnard

Léon Bonnard is the page who shares Léonie's face and her secret history, left behind when Avon carries her off to Paris and reduced to playing chess with Hugh Davenant while he waits for news. He plays a monstrous reckless game, claims a conveniently short memory, and asks after Monseigneur with a proprietary 'us' that betrays how much he misses his twin. His separation from Léonie gives the novel its quiet ache of loss, and his eventual fate is bound up with the identity she is only beginning to discover.