Leopard in Exile by Andre Norton, Rosemary Edghill

'89. But the Corsican Beast was a pragmatist
    after all, and the Church would make an uncanny enemy. And so Napoleon had ignored the communities
    of religious that had survived, and had tacitly resumed communication with Rome. France had been a
    Catholic nation ever since the Legions withdrew from the West; her excesses and her perversions were
    all cut from that same seamless cloth. She would go atheist, but never Protestant.
    The convent building showed the scars of anticlerical feeling—the statue of the Virgin which had stood
    outside its gates was chipped and battered, and the high stone walls were scarred by fire and defaced
    with paint—but the thick wooden gates were solid and unbroached.
    "Now how do we get past those?" Koscuisko murmured quizzically. He had shaved off the sideburns
    and moustaches that would instantly betray him as a military man, and his glossy chestnut hair was
    clubbed severely back. He looked like a wayward scholar.
    "I imagine," Wessex said, "that we knock."
    Leaving Koscuisko to hold the horses, Wessex and Rutledge approached the gate. A chain with a
    wooden grip fed out through a hole in the wall, and when Wessex pulled on it, he could hear a faint tinkle
    far away.
    After several minutes, the Judas-window in the door opened. Black eyes in a seamed yet ageless face
    bored into his.
    "My name is Rupert Dyer," Wessex said mildly. "May I come in?"
    "She is not here." The Mother Superior—a serene woman in dove grey robes—spoke simply.
    The doorkeeper had been a lay sister, who had quickly brought the Mother Superior to deal with this
    strange and possibly dangerous intruder. Wessex had known better than to try a bluff on the Mother
    Superior, whose loyalties lay with Rome rather than France in any case. He had simply told her the truth,
    omitting personal names wherever possible.
    "How—When did they take her?" Rutledge looked like a man in his death-agonies.
    " 'They,' m'sieur?" The elderly nun looked puzzled.
    Wessex held up a hand to keep Rutledge from saying more. "You say that Sister Marie Celeste is gone.
    Where did she go—and when?"
    The Mother Superior regarded him sorrowfully. "She vanished from her own bed in the dead of night on
    Candlemas Eve. I fear that some terrible fate has overtaken her."
    The disappointment was as sharp as a blow. Five months, and the girl missing every day of it! The trail
    was worse than cold. Had Warltawk known that when he baited Rutledge with the news of the girl's peril
    less than a week ago?
    "No. I will not believe it." Rutledge staggered slowly to his feet. "She cannot simply have vanished."
    "Was her bed slept in?" Koscuisko asked unexpectedly.
    The Mother Superior frowned, thinking. "Yes. I believe it was. But the most peculiar matter—that which
    causes us to have such worry—is that her habit and shoes remained when she had gone."
    Wessex and Koscuisko looked at each other, and each had come to the same conclusion. The girl was
    dead, though they might never know how, and there was nothing to be done now but get home as fast as
    possible. It had been foolish for Wessex to come so far, risking Rutledge's capture and his own. To
    remain would be worse than suicide. It would be black treason.
    "I thank you for your help, Madame," Wessex said. "Come, my friends. We have far to go."

Chapter Four
    The Queen of Heaven
    (Wiltshire and Baltimore, 1807)
    T he house that was nestled into the rolling Wiltshire downs had been called Mooncoign for time out of
    mind, for long years before it became King Charles Hi's gift to the first Marchioness of Roxbury over a
    century ago. It was Sarah's favorite place in all the world, even though she had only seen it for the first
    time two years before.
    Who were you — and who am I? Of your line, or I could not have been drawn here to take your
    place … but who were you? Am I like you? Rupert will not say .
    Sarah stood alone in the Long Gallery, gazing upon the painted portraits of her ancestors—or at