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Ten years later, and she can finally see. Lieutenant James McGraw's heart is still a bloody, gaping wound in his chest. Invisible to the naked eye and even to her; she can see that now.
The pulp of it drips to the floor around him. It sloughs off pieces in their bed. Miranda finds bloody trails and drops on the way to the market from the way James has never tended to that wound, his heart, never wrapped it up with care to let it heal and scar over.
She finds there are blood-damp patches on his shirt some days when she can decipher the aching pain in his eyes. That pain that has never left him even after all this time. Miranda doesn't know how she's missed it before.
The first two years of their exile from London, it was enough just to get oriented, figure out Nassau, figure out how to manage with no servants, no James for months at a time, hardly any of her things, and much less money than she was used to. James too, figuring out sailing as a pirate, working his way up the chain of command so quickly, driven like there was a pack of wild dogs behind him. Their focus had lain very short in front of them, not straying too far, so the shock of the loss didn't come back so swiftly and completely at every step into the jungle.
Her own heart needed tending in that time, to come to terms with having lost Thomas, and then the news that Thomas had-- She still couldn't think of it. That he had been driven to such an end, and that they had been party to all the events that had led to it. Yes, she had been distracted by her own suffering those first few years.
Still, she had allowed herself to grieve. She had wanted it, needed it. She'd had more time to ruminate than James, she supposed. More time to let her eyes rake over their books, the few things that remained of Thomas. She had soldiered on, finding some solace in thinking of their past life.
As she and James had gradually come up with a plan for their lives now, a plan for the the future of Nassau - and Alfred Hamilton was fatefully, deservingly, finally slain - she supposed she just believed that he had moved on, that he had overcome the straining burden of grief and guilt, as she mostly had.
All along though, James had done no such thing. He had cradled the heartache, the pain, the guilt, had cradled it all until he didn't notice that he was a walking ghost. James was still in love with Thomas. He'd never made peace with their departure. He'd never bothered to examine any of it, and so his heart had healed over as best it could; a open sore to fester and sit, and never go away, wrenched open every day as it was.
Yes, she could truly see now that James carried this pain at all times. Lived with his guilt, supported his love of Thomas. He'd propped it up and kept the pain -- Every day, he awoke and there James was, still standing on that quay in London, still standing grief-stricken in their parlor, begging Lord Ashe to tell him something different, having his heart torn to pieces afresh. Every day.
James was even more dangerous this way. Perhaps, if he had found a way to heal, if she could have helped him maybe he would have settled, become more tempered in his fight. But he hadn't and he wasn't. Each barb, scrape, and brawl was as though the wrongs were yesterday. It gave him fresh passion and vigor - not for her though - and it exhausted him equally in turn, his strength sapped away in forever lunging forward toward every new opportunity, every fresh cut made his way. Perhaps, this lurch toward more and more danger was merely a way to cope, similar to her thoughts of him fighting for the sake of fighting; he sought pain to mask what was burnt fresh into his chest, every sun up without end. New pains and wounds, perhaps they helped him make it through another day. She couldn't say for certain, but she could say it would have broken Thomas' heart just as much as it did her own to realize that was a possibility.
Miranda could finally see that this vengeance, this restitution would never end. This road to ruin would continue its course, because Lieutenant James McGraw could never leave it. Alfred Hamilton was still going to win in the end, she could so clearly see it now. James would not die of some knife wound or a bullet, he would not die of a broken heart... but he would die because of that broken heart. Wounds unseen. He would die of them, unknowing and wholly unaware that it was still there, that gaping, slaughtered mess resting inside his chest.