I am not smart. Or particularly clever. Or honest, not even with myself. Kit and Malcolm, everyone was right. I was crazy to think I was ready to scout.-…
Proving herself to her father seemed utterly pointless now. What had she expected him to do? Take her in his arms and weep on her neck? Tell her the three words she’d wanted to hear all her life? Fat chance.
Sitting there in the darkness, Margo had ample time to review every mistake she’d made, every selfish word she’d uttered, every lamebrained, dangerous risk she’d run because she hadn’t learned enough: She’d nearly let a Cape Buffalo kill her because she was too busy thinking how picturesque it was to realize her danger. Koot had warned her and she’d chosen to ignore him. What was it Kit had told her? Don’t put wild animals on some moral pedestal bearing no resemblance to reality?
And she’d nearly killed Malcolm in St. Giles. And in Rome, completely on her own … Margo had come to realize she’d come close to being killed in Rome, too, without ever realizing it. She could’ve stumbled into far less scrupulous hands than Quintus Flaminius’ — and his care of her could easily have soured. That lancet they’d used to bleed her could’ve infected her with something awful, or they might literally have bled her to death, or …
Margo’s whole experience as a time scout was one unmitigated disaster after another, with some impatient guardian angel finally throwing hands in the air in disgust and going back to whatever heaven guardian angels come from.