oleander, if consumed, can slow the heart and cause death within hours.
cw: this leans into some darker themes including a description of a dead body, mentions of a parent who has passed away, some panic attack descriptions, and just in general some doom and gloom vibes! but I promise this is a love story im just doing something different!
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(Y/N)'s eyes followed the immaculately dressed figure floating through the shop. Barred from getting closer with the counter in front of her, she could only watch as he made his way through the small apothecary. He never glanced in her direction, though she doubted he was unaware of her eyes on him.
Dried herbs hung around his head like a dreary halo, the muted tones falling in line with the rich brown of his hair. He was tall enough that he just barely grazed the line of lavender sprigs strung up and dehydrating above his head. His coat was of a deep green velvet, tailored to show off the broad of his shoulders and strength of his arms. The matching cravat around his neck stood out starkly against the white shirt under his grey waistcoat, his skin appearing almost as pale as the starchy collar standing stiff against his throat. She wished that he would turn around for just a second; she wanted to see his eyes. Were they really as dark as she remembered, or had the town's gossip altered her memory?
As if hearing her thoughts, he quickly picked his head up and made to turn and match her gaze. She urgently dropped her eyes to her hands, pretending as if she had been preoccupied the whole time by the bundles of sage she was meant to be tying. Now her wishes turned to that of hoping he didn't catch her staring. She was sure he got enough of that as is when he bothered to venture down to their small village; he didn't need any more when he was simply trying to shop.
Forcing herself to keep her eyes down, (Y/N) tried to forget the Count's presence (was he even a Count? She wasn't sure, but that was what she had heard the women at church calling him, and no one seemed to object). She hoped he couldn't hear the sound of her heart as easily as she could, the beats pounding through her ears just from the fact she knew he was traipsing around her father's shop. Casting her gaze out the small window situated by the collection counter, she tried to see past the thick fog that had gathered that morning and done little to dissipate through the hours. If not for the fact she had lived here all her life, she would have had problems navigating through the mist. She wondered how someone like the Count fared under these conditions. He barely left that castle of his, how did he or his footmen know where they were going this time of year?
Granting herself a single peek in his direction, she saw he had gone back to shopping. He moved so silently, she wondered how he was able to cross the apothecary so vastly without a single footstep being heard. She watched as he brought bundles of herbs to his nose, taking in the heady scent. He always did this, she noticed. He always looked around until he found the strongest smelling bundles.
Truthfully, to (Y/N), all the bundles smelled the same. She couldn't notice if one sprig of lavender smelled richer than another, but maybe he knew something she didn't. It wouldn't surprise her if he spent his young years studying herbs and reading books about all of the healing plants, or whatever it was that young gentlemen did in their formative years.
Though it was a hard task to pull her eyes away from him, (Y/N) made the effort to do so. Her father really would be upset if she didn't tie up all these bundles before sundown; he barely liked her working at the apothecary as is, he didn't need any other reason to boot her from the counter.
With her eyes trained on her fingers and the clumsy bows she was tying out of twine, (Y/N) practically jumped out of her skin when she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Pale hands dropped bundles of herbs on the counter, just barely in her line of sight. Her breathing stuck in her throat when she whipped her head up, finding the Count looking at her with his dark eyes.
