Lucy by M.C. Beaton

frivolous to say.
    “Good. Now I can abandon you to your fate. Boodles has been looking daggers at me. Oh, here he comes, bearing down on us and waving hot buttered crumpet all over the place. I must talk to Didi.”
    He rose and made her an elegant little bow and left her feeling as if she had just survived a storm.
    Boodles plumped heavily down into his place. "You don’t mind if I talk to you, Miss Balfour-MacGregor? Couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you. Jolly, pretty girl, what. I mean, don’t you know, shut away in this ghastly little town one doesn’t have a chance … I mean, don’t you know?” he ended miserably, looking at her with doglike eyes.
    Emboldened by his shyness, Lucy smiled at him. “Dinard seems a very pleasant place. Why do you stay here if you don’t like it?”
    “M’mother makes me,” he said. “’Course I don’t mind it
now.
I say. I’m not making you feel uncomfortable or anything?”
    “No,” said Lucy. “I feel very comfortable. The view is lovely.”
    “Lovely, eh, what!” Boodles let out a great bray of filthy laughter. Lucy shied and peered nervously out of the window, half expecting to see some couple engaged in some obscene act in the bushes. But when she turned back to Boodles, he was staring shyly at the table, his vulgar mirth having disappeared as if it had never existed. Didi was now seated next to Andrew, her little face radiant. Lucy experienced a violent twinge of jealousy followed by a feeling of irritation. She and Didi could have been such friends!
    “Do move over and let me have a word with our newcomer.” The speaker was the debutante called Elinor. She did not so much look at Lucy as
point
like a game dog.
    When Boodles had ambled reluctantly away, Elinor sat down and put her face very close to Lucy’s. “I have been hearing a
lot
about you,” she began in a tone which suggested that what she had heard was not altogether pleasant. “Scotch, I believe. I know
all
the best families. You know the Dunferns, of course.”
    “Of course,” said Lucy. “And I would rather not.” She remembered the footman and felt on safe ground.
    “Oh, really, why?”
    “I would rather not say.”
    “Oh! Where are you going to be when you are in town?”
    “I don’t know. We have yet to find a place.”
    “How odd.
Our
family has had a house in town for
centuries.”
    “Our family,” said Lucy primly, “took a dislike to town in George the Third’s reign.”
    “Why?”
    “He pinched my great-great grandmother’s bottom, King George did.”
    Elinor was impressed despite herself but she was still very jealous.
    “Where were you educated?
    “At home,” said Lucy stiffly.
    “Where’s home?”
    For the life of her Lucy could not remember the fictitious place and for a split second wondered what on earth to say. She was saved. Elinor suddenly leapt about three feet in the air and screamed, “Someone pinched my bottom!”
    Elinor looked wildly around. So did everyone else. But no one appeared to be near the girl and only Lucy had seen the spritely MacGregor nipping quickly away to the other side of the room.
    “It must have been the ghost of George the Third,” said Lucy cheerfully.
    “But I didn’t imagine it,” wailed Elinor. “My sit-upon still hurts.” Boodles delivered himself of his usual vulgar laugh and Elinor glared at him.
    “Honestly, Boodles. You should send that laugh of yours out to be laundered,” snapped Elinor, turning once again to Lucy. “What were we talking about, Miss Balfour-MacGregor?”
    “We weren’t really talking,” said Lucy with sudden asperity.
“You
were asking a frightful lot of questions.”
    Lucy had not meant to be so sharp but the sight of Andrew Harvey laughing and chatting with Didi made her feel lost and empty.
    With relief, she saw the other man, Buffy, approaching. “Are you going to Mr. Jones’s ball?” he asked.
    “If I am invited,” said Lucy.
    “Oh, we all are.”
    “Pay no attention,”