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He remembers a time when his daughters were just girls playing at being wives; now they’re women who’ve just been wedded and are about to be bedded by their husbands. They both look beautiful, his girls, hair the colour of copper and fire, skin milky pale covered with faint freckles, tanned shoulders kissed by the southern sun and the water of his rivers, blue eyes clear as the sky… They’re just girls barely into womanhood, he thinks, Cat only nine-and-ten and Lysa seven-and-ten, Lysa still with full cheeks and dried tears at the corners of her eyes.
It makes him feel sick when he thinks of why she’s crying, of how ungrateful she’s being; yes, she’s just a girl, but she was stupid enough to ruin herself with that stripling wretched boy and now he has to give her to a man twenty years older than himself; he would have kept her with him for a bit longer, made a match with a well born man, young and gallant to appeal to her, and handsome too, if she so desired… But Lysa is ruined and the rage keeps creeping up his chest to his throat, choking him, burning his skin.
It’s more than he could have hoped for, Lord Arryn, an honest man, honourable, kind, gentle, smart… Well born and a great leader, too. Cat is now Lady Stark, Lysa, Lady Arryn, and soon he will be able to forget that sweet Lysa ever betrayed him and sullied the family’s good name.
She will understand, Lysa will, his lovely Lysa will understand it and will be grateful, in the end, once she’s settled in the Eyrie, surrounded by children and loved by her husband and in the end, she will thank him; because all he’s ever done, he’s done it for his family.