I disliked These Old Shades on first reading and quite liked it on the second--may change my mind if I get back to it again. Venetia made me incredibly uncomfortable on the first reading, but on the reread I found it far more deftly handled than I'd remembered. Cotillion is charming and funny; Frederica is surprisingly sweet; and Talisman Ring wins hands-down for best couple, in part because I honestly thought for the first several chapters that she was writing her book about the wrong characters and was terribly relieved when that turned out not to be the case.