Excerpt from The Davenports by Krystal Marquis, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Amy-Rose threw her arms around his neck. He smelled like hay and horses, sweat and determination. Tommy was a salve to her battered soul when she needed a friend. A good man, hardworking and proud. How could she not want the best for him?

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll come back to visit my father. And for your grand opening."

She laughed around the lump in her throat and pulled away. She tried to imagine Freeport—Chicago—without him. Already, the world around her seemed less bright. As if he knew what she was thinking, he brushed a finger against her cheek, catching a tear before it fell. He said, "Everyone has to leave home sometime."

Chapter 4
Ruby

Ruby Tremaine loved her best friend, truly she did, but nothing highlighted the change in her circumstances more than lying on Olivia's four-poster, silk-canopied bed after a long day of shopping for items Olivia cared so little about.

Ruby's own life had been reduced to budgets and polite smiles, as Margaret, the maid she and her mother now shared, tore up her old dresses and attempted to make them look different and daring enough to pass as new purchases. Luckily, the latest trend of narrow, shorter skirts meant there was enough fabric to work with.

Ruby had tried to ignore the signs of her father's tightening grip on her purse strings, especially when the city's influential lawmakers continued to appear at dinner each week, or when her family enjoyed the view from their private box at the racetrack. But then last spring, Henry Tremaine sat his wife and daughter down in the study and told them he was running for office. "We will all have to do our part," he said.

Our part.

Our part felt more and more like their decisions and her consequences. Ruby still tried to focus on the positive outcome of when her father succeeded in his bid for mayor. She was in much better circumstances than her cousins in Georgia, who, with her father's help, recently secured ownership of the land where her uncle was a tenant farmer. The cotton they harvested supplied the raw materials for the textiles produced at the Tremaine mill and boardinghouse. But failing crops down south coupled with the financial stress of the campaign were taking their toll.

At first it was fun. New, handsome politicians to flirt with, even if she had to suffer through endless debates about wages and the overcrowding in factories.

Less than a year later, though, Ruby wasn't sure if her father was any closer to becoming Chicago's first Black mayor, much as she hated that stab of doubt. She did know that a summer holiday in Paris was drifting farther and farther from reach.

Of course, Ruby had intended to confide all this to her best friend several times before today, but the words always got stuck somewhere in her chest. Every purchase Olivia ordered seared a hole in Ruby's pride and forced her to bite back the poison bitterness rising in her. She'd disappear between the displays of the department store and admire the wares, telling herself the lack of pressure to purchase was a relief. At least it allowed her to sulk in private, which she seldom did around her friend.

Olivia entered from the drawing room she shared with Helen. "What have you heard of this Jacob Lawrence?" she asked. Her eyes glowed as she stared out her bedroom window.

Ruby shrugged. "You?"

Olivia shook her head. "He is something, isn't he? I'd like to know more about him, but I'm afraid showing too much interest will have Mama hovering closer than ever." She smiled. "Do you think there's a secret catalog where parents find suitable husbands?"

"If there is, I'd like a subscription." Ruby sighed, her chest tightening at the thought of John.

Olivia's delicate brows wrinkled. She must have sensed Ruby's anxiety, because she said, "We are to be true sisters soon. Once John is over the stress of impressing Daddy, I'm sure he'll make you a grand proposal."

Excerpted from The Davenports by Krystal Marquis. Copyright © 2023 by Krystal Marquis. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.