Ultimately, she felt certain, it had been her relationship with Giscard, with its resonances to his own relationship with LePic, which had made her acceptable to him. He’d known and trusted Giscard; by extension, he’d felt able to trust her because he knew Giscard did. But the thing which had truly astounded her was that when he offered her both the political and the military powers of the head of state, he’d meant it.

There hadn’t been any strings, no reservations, no secretly retained authority. The one thing Thomas Theisman would never be was a puppet master. There’d been one, and only one, condition, and that had been that Eloise Pritchart prove to him that she was as committed as he was to the restoration of the old Constitution. Not the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Haven, which had created the office of Hereditary President and legally enshrined the dynastic power of the Legislaturalists, but the Constitution of the old Republic. The Republic whose citizens had been expected to be more than mere drones and to vote. The one whose presidents and legislators had served at the will of an electorate which held them responsible for their actions.

Pritchart had felt almost awed when she realized she was in the presence of a true romantic. A man who actually believed in the rule of law, the sanctity of solemn oaths, and the inviolability of personal responsibility.

She wondered if he’d always been so divorced from reality, or if he’d become that way as his own defense mechanism as he watched the star nation of his birth go insane about him. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was that he was truly and absolutely committed to the very principles for which the Aprilist Movement had come into existence… and that she was almost as hopelessly romantic, in that respect, at least, as he was.

And so, just over eighteen T-months from Oscar Saint-Just’s death, Eloise Pritchart, after organizing the transition government and bringing the old Constitution back from the ash heap of history, had become the first elected president of the Republic of Haven in almost two centuries, with Thomas Theisman as her Secretary of War.

There were times when she was highly tempted to shoot him for that.

“You know, Tom,” she said, only half-whimsically, “you’re a coward.”

“Absolutely,” he agreed instantly. “It’s a survival trait.”

“Is that what you call it?” She cocked her head at him. “I’d assumed it was more a combination of laziness and a desire to put someone else in the line of fire.”

“A burning desire to put someone else there, actually,” he corrected affably. Then his smile faded just a bit, and he shrugged.

“There’s not quite as much humor in that as I wish there were,” he said in a quieter voice. “I think I know my strengths, Eloise. And I hope to hell I know my limitations. There’s no way I could’ve done the job you’ve done. I know you couldn’t have done it, either, if I hadn’t been here to do my job, but that doesn’t change a thing about what you’ve accomplished.”