She had often told Sadie whilst she was growing up how much she missed her childhood home. Sadie had been too young then to suggest that her grandmother lower her pride and make contact with her brother, with a view to visiting Grasse and the house.
My father would have been so angry and hurt if he had known what my brother did. Will you keep it or sell it? Her reticence owed more to her own loyalty to her grandmother than a reluctance to confide in Leon. She was well aware that an outsider who had not known her grandmother might question her stubbornness in refusing to have anything to do with her estranged brother.
And, for reasons she was not prepared to delve deeply into, it was becoming increasingly important to Sadie that Leon felt warmly and sympathetically towards the grandmother she had loved so much. Leon was still looking at her, with one dark eyebrow raised and an expression in his eyes that told her he knew she was being evasive. Ruefully, she gave a small shrug.
I just think it would be very sad if it were to be sold off, or converted into offices or apartments like so many of the older buildings have been. Immediately Sadie shook her head. Not even if I sold my home in England. Even if Raoul had been lying, the sum he had agreed to pay him for the business and the property was, in his opinion, on the dangerous side of generousβand he knew that his board would agree with him.
Sadie would by virtue of her one-third holding in Francine receive one-third of that money. Could she actually be angling for him to offer to hand over the Grasse property to her? But he was enough of a businessman to respect the fact that she was in a position where, if she chose to do so, she could set an extremely high value on her expertise. Once they had told him he had decided that in view of the fact she was giving up her stance on natural raw materials, and agreeing to create a new perfume, he had added a large extra amount onto the sum he had informed his legal team he would be paying her as a salary.
