Time Scout by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

He leaned forward, closing in on the kill. “Point three: I will not train a nice kid and turn her over to the likes of some of the brutes I’ve encountered. Even the nicest down-time men often had a nasty habit of beating their favorite women for cardinal sins like talking too much. Whatever your reasons, Margo, forget ’em. Go home.”

The interview was clearly over.

Kit Carson didn’t quite condescend to pat her head on the way out. He left her sitting in the candlelit booth, fighting tears of rage-and worse, of crushing disappointment. Margo downed a big glass of bourbon and vowed, One day, you’re gonna eat those words. Cold and raw, you’ll eat ’em. She couldn’t bear to glance in the direction of his friends. Margo flinched inwardly at the spate of laughter from a crowded table across the room. She closed her hand around the bourbon bottle, gripping until her fingers ached. She was not a quitter. She intended to become the world’s first woman time scout. She didn’t care what it took.

The bill, when Marcus the displaced slave presented it, represented a third of everything Margo possessed in the world. The bill would’ve been higher, but the glass of white wine didn’t appear on it. She was being charged only for the bottle of bourbon. Margo groaned inwardly and dug into her belt pouch for money. How she was going to pay for a room now …

”Well,” she told herself, “time to put Plan B into operation.”

Find a job and settle in for a long, hard battle to find someone willing to train her. If Kit Carson wouldn’t do it, maybe someone else would. Malcolm Moore, maybe. Freelance time guide wasn’t what she had in mind, but it was a start. If, of course, he could be convinced to help train his own competition …