Henry Truscott, hero of The Rake and Purity, returns in Velvet Skin to continue his habits of indulgence and dissipation. There are ample opportunities in eighteenth-century Devon for an imaginitive aristocrat to pursue his perversions. Even so, Henry manages to find himself in trouble - like being caught pony-carting on his own land by the local vicar, for example. But the fiendish, rapacious Lewis Stukely makes Truscott look like a monk - and Stukely has designs on Suki, Truscott's beguiling new servant-girl.