Grey Expectations Read Online Free PDF Page A

Despite their supposedly radical content, those essays were the driest part of her research thus far – and they were a necessary evil. All of her colleagues had to read material they didn’t love. When she thought of what Trista had plowed through, she shuddered.
    Another thought made her shiver again, despite the humidity that had closed down the earlier cool evening breeze. Trista. There was something wrong with what her friend had been telling her. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Dulcie took another bite and tried to figure out what was bothering her.
    There were a lot of options. Maybe, she thought hopefully, Trista had been wrong about the whole thing. Maybe Roland wasn’t even dead – or not murdered, anyway. Trista had been so hazy about what had happened – even about what she had been asked. If someone had come to question Dulcie, she’d have remembered his – or her – name, for sure. She’d probably have gotten a badge number. Then again, living with Suze as her friend went through law school might have given her an unusual perspective. And Trista had reason to be preoccupied, didn’t she? Dulcie looked at Esmé for an answer, but the little cat remained silent.
    The second question was why Trista had been so reticent about soliciting help. Once she’d unburdened herself to Dulcie, she’d seemed ready to forget the whole thing. As Esmé stretched out along the sofa, Dulcie answered that one for herself. Trista had her hands full: the Kiplinger prize, the lecture in Providence, the defense of her thesis  . . . there was only so much even a particularly sharp human mind could contain.
    Besides, Dulcie had almost promised to ask Suze about it. Trista hadn’t come this far without being organized. At some level, she probably considered the problem delegated. She hadn’t been charged, not yet, and she’d done what she could, following a first interrogation. When she was a full professor and had a team of graduate students laboring under her that would be a useful skill.
    Dulcie, however, could not let go of anything so easily. Maybe that was why Trista had pulled ahead of her in the race to finish. She and Trista had passed their general exams the same semester. They had even settled on their topics at around the same time. But still, Dulcie knew she was at least a year away from finishing, whereas Trista could be gone by September.
    The idea of finishing boggled the mind, and – staring at Esmé for answers – Dulcie wondered if that was in fact one reason she wasn’t yet done. True, research had been a little easier for Trista: those Victorians documented every aspect of their lives, whereas Dulcie really had to dig to find out about her subject. But that had been a large part of the appeal of Dulcie’s topic. She had fallen in love with the nearly forgotten Gothic novel, The Ravages of Umbria , in part because of its obscurity. Not only was the author unknown, the work itself – what was left of it – was usually dismissed as so much sensationalist claptrap – yet another goosebump-raising tale of an orphaned heiress trapped in a lonely tower. The ornate – some would say ‘overwritten’ – prose had wrapped her in its spell and convinced her that there was more to the book, and its nameless author, than just some cheap high-jinks, or another ‘She-Author’ trying to make some quick eighteenth-century pence.
    And it wasn’t like Dulcie hadn’t made any progress. Through scrupulous textual analysis, Dulcie had just about proven that the wild adventure did have more to it than ghosts and unfaithful knights. Had, in fact, proven that the nameless author had used her fun fiction to lay out a powerful argument for women’s rights. An argument that might have caused her to take ship and flee from London to the New World. But to support that initial discovery,