Love's Gambit
Harrington, Emma
Jessamy could outwit any man at chess...but could she win at the game of love?

A LADY WITH PLANS...

Lovely Jessamy Montgomery had come to Baltimore to meet that rough-hewn American who had inherited her late husband's fortune.  With stratagems plotted to a fare-thee-well, she sought to convince him to name her child as his legal heir.  Only the new earl was hardly the bumpkin she envisioned, but a desirable bachelor, with a plan of his own.  To wit, he hoped to marry her off by inviting a score of potential husbands to a string of gala soirees.  No fool she, Jessamy jestingly offered to wed the first who could best her at chess--in which she excelled.  But the earl called her bluff and, as suitors fell by the board, he took up the post himself.  How could Jessamy surmise that her handsome host was playing a different game, that soon her plans would take a romantic turn so that society would wonder whether the aristocratic widow had finally met her match!