The dining room was the first room Alysandra and focused on when they had moved in. It had been July, and she knew they would be be hosting Thanksgiving and Friendsgiving and several gatherings in between.
Her parents had given them her grandmother’s Edith’s hunt board. It had quite a story, Alysandra mused— it had been her grandmother’s first big purchase on her trip abroad to Paris in the 1920s. It was a very traditional piece. Crafted from beautiful rosewood and enscribed with the designer and crafters name- Louise Paul Campbell IV. “Who knew that furniture makers had so many generations who named themselves after themselves....” She thought. When she and her brother and had been kids they played in the hunt board once— got in terrible trouble later for breaking a piece of china that had been intended for her brother’s inheritance— but before that had all happened, Alysandra and her brother found a little secret compartment in the cabinets. It didn’t have anything in it- it was a pity. As she and her brother tried to wildly explain away the broken china, they learned that their parents had always known about the compartment. In fact- that is where the family fortune had come from—which was plenty spent by the time Alysandra and her brother were poking around- but there were still stories.
Grandma Edith found a letter inside the compartment after she’d purchased it and set it up in her home. When she read it, she assumed it had been written by the furniture maker to his lover. But one evening she’d been hosting the local Historical Society’s chair, and the topic came up. Upon inspection he felt sure that this had been not Louis Paul Campbell IV’s lover Genivieve — but KING Louis IV’s lover Genivieve. These things make all the difference.
Alysandra placed the silver trays on top of the hunt board and turned her attention to sorting through the rest of the china to ensure they had matches and the right linens for the upcoming dinner party.