That made him laugh, freely and easily, enjoying the gentle back and forth between them. He wouldn't say that he wasn't, that he genuinely found it sexy, but he was sure his expression was saying it for him anyway.
"It is, definitely," he agreed, before giving her a bit of a smile and a nod abut the suffragettes. "Mm, if you haven't tried Jane Eyre yet, then you should. Just get past the part about the school, and on to the governess years," he told her. "I remember getting to the proposal, which is fucking horrible to begin with, and just being blown away. I am no bird; and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will, that I now exert to leave you." he quoted confidentally, before sipping whiskey. "The idea that a poor little governess would have the audacity to turn down a marriage proposal from a wealthy man? It was completely off the rails back then, it was like put the book down and try to catch your breath shocking," he grinned. "You might like Mrs Dalloway. I hated it, for far too many reasons, but you might, thematically," he suggested in addition, almost a tagged on afterthought, just the way his mind linked ideas together.
"Maybe," he agreed at her assessment of him, not finding it to be anything other than an astute observation.
"Adorable? Ugh-" he scoffed, not a fan of his midwest upbringing. "Excuse me, my father was a doctor-" he told her, with clearly false pretension. "It is very un-me, but the whole town was very un-me," he insisted, and then laughed at her own story. "Abigail Knightly, you disreputable young lady!" he teased. He caught the little look, and the lick of her lips, and raised his eyebrows slightly, giving her a teasing look. "Well, when you're repressed as hell, you've got to overcompensate with weaponry," he admitted, in a slightly humorous tone, although he believed it to be true as well.
He was glad not to get into the war. It was a quick way to ruin a date, especially if he found himself emotional, shaking and panicked, that was an incredibly unsexy scar. The mental scar. "Oh, yes. Nothing to do with being the only women I saw for months on end, I was a stupidly naive teenager- but there was one nurse who ended up being fictionalised in Arms, so I suppose it was good for something," he smiled. His mind went to their letters, the promises of exploring scars on each other, and he took a sharper breath. "Apparently so, and you know I have plenty," he told her, the words heavy with the meaning known to the two of them alone.
"I think so, it definitely started something, at least. I couldn't stop reading, and there was little else to distract me at the time. I suppose the war conditioned me into the writer," he smiled.