Free The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld

cousin.'
        'Everybody's your cousin.'
        'Not by blood. And very distant. I'm better acquainted with his i la lighter Alice. That is, I was - briefly - acquainted with her.'
        'Don't tell me.'
        Younger said nothing.
        'Darn it, Doc - Roosevelt's daughter?' cried Littlemore. 'And a beauty girl? Why didn't you marry her?'
        'For one thing she had a husband.'
        'Doc, Doc, Doc,' said Littlemore. 'T.R.'s daughter. Was this before or after you and Nora?'
        'A notorious philanderer,' added Younger. 'You're no philanderer.' 'I meant Alice's husband. But thank you.' 'You're more of a womanizer.'
        'Ah. A fine distinction,' said Younger. 'I'm not a womanizer. I don't sleep with them. Unless I like them. Which is rarely. You don't - stray?'
        'Me?' Littlemore laughed. 'I always ask what my dad would do. He would never have done something like that, so I don't.'
        'How is he - your dad?'
        'Good. I still visit with him most every weekend.' Littlemore drummed his fingers on the table. 'What kind of name is Drobac anyway?' Colette had told the police that the kidnapper who escaped - the leader of the three men - had been called Drobac by his confederates. 'And why'd he ask us, "Where are they"? Where are what?'
        'Why did he kill his own man?' rejoined Younger.
        'That's easy - to keep him from talking.' Littlemore put his heels up on the table, and his voice changed tone. 'But you know what I really don't get?'
        'What exactly I'm doing with Colette,' said Younger.
        'You bring her back from France,' said Littlemore, warming to the theme, 'but you got her living in Connecticut. You go crazy when she disappears, but you act, I don't know, all proper when she's around.'
        'You're wondering when I plan to propose.'
        'Why'd you bring her across the Atlantic otherwise? Unless you plan to ruin her.'
        'You seem anxious about my marital prospects tonight.'
        'Well, are you or aren't you?' asked Littlemore.
        'Planning to ruin her? Tried that already,' said Younger. He took a long drink. 'Want to hear about it?'
        'Sure.'

Chapter Five
        
        In October 1917, Lieutenant Dr Stratham Younger was transferred to the American field hospital in Einville, not far from Nancy, where US Army troops had finally been deployed in the front lines. At that time American soldiers served under French command; Younger ended up treating more Frenchmen than Americans. Throughout the harsh winter and the following spring, attached to the First Division and later to the Second, Younger traversed the Western Front, assigned wherever the need was greatest: the Saint-Mihiel salient, Seicheprey, Chaumont-en-Vexin, Cantigny, the Bois de Belleau.
        It was there, near the woods of Belleau, on the outskirts of Chateau- Thierry, that he met Colette.
        Dawn was breaking. With a reddening sky came a lull in the savage bombardments of the night. Younger, on foot, emerged from the woods into an open field, dragging a wounded old French corporal to the medical compound. The compound was intact - white tents, tables, and instrument chests all in place - but not a doctor or orderly was III sight. The medical staff had obviously decamped in a hurry.
        Noises came from across the field. French infantrymen had gathered at a Red Cross truck. They reminded Younger of children crowding around an ice-cream van, except for an air of male wildness about them.
        With the corporal's arm draped over his shoulder, Younger crossed the field through pockets of mist clinging to the rutted soil. A young woman stood outside the truck, hemmed in by a semicircle of boisterous men. Her back to them, she leaned through a window into the cab of the truck. The men called out - in French, which Younger understood invented maladies and mock pleas for treatment. One of them, with a particularly raucous voice, begged the