Ned did not break the seal on the letters until after the King's messenger and most of the household had gone to bed. He was not all that eager to read about what Robert wanted - or wanted to give - this time. He never was. Robert's letters were always penned in Jon Arryn's hand, and always a source of embarrassment and resentment and weary sadness.
He could no more forgive Robert's easy acceptance of the Targaryen children's death than he could stop imagining Jon Sand in their place, his little skull smashed in, half a hundred stab wounds all over his small body. He could no more turn down Robert's gifts than he could be truly happy about them. He could not think about his foster brother without feeling an unsettling longing for what had once been. He sucked in a breath, steeled himself, and broke the seal.
He read the letter through once, then twice, and it was all he could do not to laugh, or cry. He was not sure which urge was strongest. He would have asked for Jon to be legitimised years ago if not for the fear and sorrow it would bring his wife, if not for his own fear of what would happen if Robert ever stopped to pay attention to little Jon's existence. Except it seemed that Robert had never forgotten about Jon, but had also never once stopped to put the clues together, and thank the Gods for that.
He had never believed in such a thing as fate, but for a moment there, he thought he might. In another world, another life, Jon would have been born the Prince of Summerhall, or even the Prince of Dragonstone. Certainly that, after little Aegon's death. And somehow, now, Robert, knowing nothing, had seen fit to make Jon Lord of Dragonstone.
There was irony to it, and Ned could not help but feel chilled down to his bones at it, at the momentary thought that maybe everything had been written out already, maybe they were all playing out the roles set for them, and some things were writ in stone regardless of what else might happen. The thought of it frightened him.
The thought of little Jon on Dragonstone made him shudder. The thought of sending away the child he had come to love as his own hurt like a blade between his ribs. Jon belonged in the North, in Winterfell, where Ned could look over him, could ensure his safety, where he could try his best to give him all the love his parents were unable to.
In the end, though, the only thing within Ned's power to withhold from Robert was his friendship. And if these often cruel Gods of theirs somehow, for whatever reasons, saw fit to gift Jon with some small sliver of what should have been his by birth, Ned could not deny them. Not when they weight of Arthur Dayne's accusing eyes grew heavier by the day, not when Jon himself grew more silent and solemn with every moon that passed, as if some little piece of his nephew was scoured away for every day he had to believe himself nothing more than the bastard of Winterfell.
Still, his hands shook with apprehension when he wrote back his acceptance to Robert.