Work Text:
The weeks before Christmas were always busy. Every Shadowhunter family in London would feel the need to outdo each other with lavish parties, or if they were the Lightwoods try and outdo the previous year’s party. And Charlotte always hated it. She had no real close friends due to most of the older generation believing that she acted more like a man than she had any right to do so and therefore curtailing her friend making opportunities, and a party is no fun without a friend.
There was one positive about the season however, Henry. Normally they would see each other every few weeks or so, neither of them attended many parties, but Christmas parties were impossible to avoid and so it meant weeks of seeing him almost every day.
This year things were different however, Charlotte had known Henry had asked her father if they could be married at the beginning of December and yet he had not spoken a word of it to her. She had never had a mother to advise her of the social conventions of how she was meant to act towards him and all her father had said that they would announce the engagement in the New Year. She had no desire to spend each party waiting for Henry to say something to her, in case he never actually did - perhaps they saw it as something that had already been decided on with her conversation with her father. Of course it wasn’t the romantic proposal she had hoped for but she didn’t expect Henry to love her as she did him.
But when Henry avoided her at each party she was unsure what to make of it, had her father somehow misunderstood him? It was strange but since she refused to go to her father with so emotional a question and Henry practically ran away from her every time she tried to approach him she had no choice but to puzzle it over by herself.
Each year the Institute held a party on Christmas Eve to which not just London Shadowhunters were invited but those from all over the country, it was meant to be the shining jewel in the crown of the winter season and although everyone came party planning just wasn’t one of Charlotte’s skills. This year she had tried to pull out all the stops, she knew that time was running out to prove herself capable in the eyes of the Clave and this was one of the few chances she had independent of anyone else. Even the Lightwoods congratulated her.
It was late then Henry finally approached her, people were already leaving and she hadn’t even been certain he had come.
“May I speak to you alone Miss Fairchild?” he asked her in the awkward manner that she loved so.
Charlotte tried not to look so happy that he was finally speaking to her, although she was sure she had failed. “Of course,” and she swiftly led him into a side chamber (the door left open of course).
It was only as she sat down that he spoke again, “I apologise for ignoring you of late, it was rude of me.”
She made a move to speak, only to be silenced by him speaking once again.
“I have a Christmas present for you,” and out of his pocket he produced a small toy which he handed to her without any further ceremony. “It’s an angel.”
It was a perfect Christmas angel with wings and a halo and all that you would expect from a mundane tradition, and really it was quite lovely. “Thank you Henry,” she told him quite sincerely as she carefully examined it – she just hoped that it wouldn’t explode in her hands, or well explode at all.
When she looked up again Henry was on his knees in front of her and a sudden breath caught in her throat.
“Charlotte, my angel, please will you marry me?”
Afterwards she was sure that if it wasn’t for the fact that she already knew that he had asked for her hand she would have burst into tears right then and there. Instead, she gave him a brilliant smile and told him, “of course I will.”
Somehow they found themselves tightly wrapped in each other’s arms and both grinning like they had been given their dearest dream. And remained that way until her father came in a few minutes later with stern serious, but not entirely disapproving eyes, and suggested that since all the other guests had left perhaps it was time for Henry to do so too.
Charlotte didn’t think that she stopped smiling for a month and forever after her little angel rested next to her bed.