THE SCANDAL OF BEING KNOWN
Vivienne Hart
She studied the stars. He studied the art of never being known. A bookshop, a bargain, and six weeks that rewrote the sky.
London, 1812. Lady Cecilia Ashworth is twenty-four, spectacled, and the most unmarriageable woman in the ton—not because she lacks beauty, but because she cannot stop explaining nebular hypothesis during quadrilles. Three Seasons. Three rejected proposals. One half-finished paper on binary star perturbation that she intends to submit to the Royal Astronomical Society under the ambiguous initial "C. Ashworth," because the Society does not, as a rule, accept papers from women.
Sebastian Hale, Viscount Lennox, is twenty-nine, charming, and running out of time. His grandmother—the formidable Dowager Duchess of Ashby—has issued an ultimatum: marry before October or lose the family fortune. The problem is that Sebastian's rakish reputation is a performance, his charm is a wall, and the only thing he truly loves is a locked observatory in Hampstead where his late mother's telescope still points at the sky.
When they meet over a contested copy of Laplace in Hatchard's Bookshop, a bargain is struck: he will teach her to survive the ballroom; she will teach him the stars. Six weeks. No complications.
But complications arrive anyway—in the form of a waltz that becomes a conversation, an observatory that becomes a confession, and a kiss in a garden beneath Cassiopeia that neither of them planned and neither of them can undo.
When scandal erupts and Cecilia's paper is threatened, the bargain shatters. The question is no longer whether they can help each other. The question is whether they can be known—truly, fully, without performance or disguise—and survive what the knowing costs.
"The most beautiful things are the things that require courage to see."
The Scandal of Being Known is a witty, passionate Regency romance about the courage it takes to be visible in a world that rewards hiding. Featuring a bluestocking heroine who weaponises Herschel, a reformed rake with a secret telescope, and a Dowager Duchess who could negotiate the surrender of nations.
