After finishing the letter, Jon Arryn sealed it with wax and summoned his most trusted attendant. "Take this letter to Lord Tywin. You must deliver it into the lord's own hands. No one else is to touch it."
The attendant accepted his orders and withdrew.
Arryn sat for a little longer, then suddenly felt another splitting headache. He spotted the wine Petyr had just sent over, poured himself a cup, and drank it.
The wine was sweet, fragrant with grapes. After drinking it, his headache seemed to ease a little.
But he did not know that the letter he had just written would never reach Tywin.
In the lady's bedchamber in the Tower of the Hand, Lysa Tully opened her husband's sealed letter.
Old Arryn would never know that his supposedly most loyal servant had long since been corrupted by his wife. Littlefinger had, of course, had a hand in it. Otherwise, how could that fat, foolish woman possibly have managed it?
Her eyes were red and swollen from years of crying. Ever since she had married a husband as old as her father, her life had been like a stagnant pool.
Only Petyr, her Littlefinger, still remembered her as she had been in her girlhood. He would tenderly call her "little Lysa" and listen as she poured out her grievances.
She had only meant to see what Arryn had been busy with lately, but instead she discovered a shocking secret.
"Seven preserve us..." She covered her mouth.
With her limited capacity for thought, she believed that if this letter was sent, war would inevitably break out. Her son, Little Robert, might be dragged into it, and perhaps the entire House Arryn would suffer. She did not believe for a moment that Tywin would accept the terms in the letter.