Chapter 12
The only communication Xavier had with Brigitte was one brief email telling her that he considered their marriage on hold for the moment.
In suspension, after her blatant infidelity.
And that he would advise her when he was prepared to deal with it.
It was March by then, and he offered her no date as to when he would be ready to make a decision.
She didn’t respond, which was fine with him.
He consulted a lawyer, who told him that the ball was in his court, which was a good position to be in.
Morally, he didn’t owe her as much as he would have if she had been a good and faithful wife to him.
Xavier had no intention of cheating her out of money he owed her legally.
And infidelity was no longer grounds for divorce in France.
But he had not decided what to do about their marriage, and Sabrina didn’t ask him.
At face value, even to him, or especially to him, the marriage seemed like yet another failure to add to the list, but he also knew it was bigger than that.
It was a union which should never have happened, a decision he had made at twenty-six.
He had the excuse of youth then, but he didn’t now.
And he didn’t want to make another mistake with how he resolved it.
Sometimes the price of doing the honorable thing was just too high.
Brigitte had abused him emotionally so severely for so long, and especially the last four years, that he had given up sex for eight or ten years and didn’t care.
He felt frozen inside, and was finally thawing out and feeling human again.
He was working hard on the remodel of the hotel with Pascal.
They had made tremendous progress, and by April, it was beginning to show signs of its original elegance and grandeur.
They were going to offer every possible luxury service, and were hiring the most efficient people in France to run the spa.
They wanted to offer the best of everything at high prices that seemed worth it.
Two important jewelers and Hermès had signed contracts for three of the shops.
There would be seven exclusive luxury shops in all, and Xavier and Pascal were choosing carefully among the many contenders.
And in April Xavier asked for Sabrina’s help with a project she was excited about.
He wanted to open an art gallery at the hotel.
He had a prime location reserved for it in the main lobby and could even exhibit artwork around the hotel.
He wanted to get Sabrina’s advice about what artists to show, and to hire a curator and a manager for the gallery.
She was thrilled to advise him, and went to several art fairs, looking for new artists.
She contacted the artists she represented in L.A.
and asked if they were interested in representation in France.
Nine of them had responded positively. She selected their work from slides Hallie sent her, and some pieces had already been shipped and were being kept in a locked room at the hotel.
Sabrina was excited to help Xavier with it, and the gallery they were building was a beautiful space.
She helped Xavier hire a manager and an assistant to run the gallery.
She thoroughly enjoyed advising him, and they selected many of the pieces together.
A number of the artists were going to come to the opening of the hotel in July.
Xavier had already started a media blitz advertising the hotel.
They were offering free rooms to international celebrities for the opening and the months of August and September.
Stars being seen around the pool would give it a reputation for an elite clientele.
Xavier used all his advertising skills to make it the place everyone would want to come to, on a par with the Ritz in Paris and the H?tel du Cap/Eden Roc in the south of France.
They were using the hotel’s original name, the Empress Eugénie.
Xavier was working night and day, seven days a week.
Pascal was handling everything to do with construction, and Xavier was doing the rest. They were placing newspaper interviews and ads on TV, and in travel magazines.
They wanted to make it the most exclusive hotel in France.
They were calling it a six-star experience at a five-star hotel.
Pascal had chosen his partner well, and three months before the opening, it already had the sweet smell of success.
Xavier hadn’t been to Paris since his fateful encounter with Brigitte and her boss, and he didn’t miss it. He didn’t have time for his own interviews and headhunters now. He was too busy with the hotel.
—
While Xavier was working as hard as he could on the hotel, Sabrina was working on the mural at the monastery.
She assigned teams of the children to help her with basic preparation of the surface, and the mixing of the colors.
Only she worked on the creation of the Arcangues Blue, as close in hue as she could get it to the shutters in the village, until they all agreed it was a perfect match.
She had enlisted Geraldine to help her when the first supplies arrived, and she became a dedicated little assistant and followed Sabrina’s instructions to the letter.
At first, with only the gray underbase to apply, many of the children weren’t interested, but as the animals began to emerge, and the colors were added, they all begged for a turn to help her, and everyone got a chance.
Geraldine remained her chief assistant, and even Luc helped Sabrina draw and paint one of a pair of monkeys sitting on a hippo’s back.
The enormous brilliant blue ark took several teams to complete.
The work continued through April and became more intense.
The unveiling for the village was scheduled for the first of May, on the May Day holiday, with the scent of lily of the valley everywhere.
The opening of the hotel was less than three months away, and Xavier had been too busy to keep up on her progress with the mural.
She hardly saw him, and he had a look of confidence now when he dropped by to see her, or she met with him at the hotel to show him slides of the artists who were begging to be included at the gallery.
He loved what she showed him, and she helped choose the art for the halls of the hotel.
It had elegance and grandeur but she had included little pockets of contemporary work too, as surprises, to satisfy everyone’s taste in art.
The work was by talented artists, some known, some not, just like her gallery in L.A.
And the work was pouring in, sent by the artists once they picked it.
They had a huge storage space in a Victorian barn, just for the art.
It had rapidly outgrown the space they had previously picked.
Sabrina spent Easter finishing the ark in her mural, and putting the finishing touches on it.
After that it was kept covered to be unveiled on the first of May, during the village celebration of May Day.
Xavier hadn’t seen it finished either. She had done it in a fairly primitive style, so the children’s contributions would marry well.
And she had added her own talent in fine arts.
The animals looked as though they were about to walk off the ark.
And Noah had a Rubenesque quality to him, with incredible detail work.
She spent hours working on him, as he came to life.
On the day that the mural was to be unveiled, Xavier promised to be there to see it.
All of the children were wearing crowns of lily of the valley the nuns had made, and Sabrina stood to one side with Sister Anne and Mother Regina, drinking apple cider.
They had been discussing Geraldine’s impressive progress, and Sabrina’s close attention to her had been part of it.
She was teaching her to draw and paint. There was to be a court hearing soon to determine which one of her relatives she was going to live with, and there had been criminal charges filed against her uncle, who had resigned his political post. But Geraldine had told Sabrina that she didn’t want to leave her.
Sabrina promised to visit her wherever she was sent, and she could come to stay at Bonport whenever she wanted.
As they stood waiting for the unveiling of the mural to begin, Sabrina saw Xavier come through the crowd. He had come from the hotel in his work clothes and apologized as soon as he got to her.
“I didn’t want to be late, so I couldn’t go home to change. I’m sorry.”
“I’m just happy you’re here, thank you for coming,” she said, smiling.
The turnout to see the mural was impressive.
Everyone in the village knew about it, but only the nuns and the children had seen it.
Barriers and screens had been set up to keep people away, and ever since Easter it had been covered with tarps.