'My love for you I have guarded with the care of a miser shielding his gold'

When Kay Wheatcroft first read the love letters, which sealed the marriage of her great-grandparents, she felt she was prying into a private world she was never supposed to see.

Her great-grandfather Robert Jamieson had kept each and every letter written by his fiance, Barbara Laing, in a secret drawer and for years, that's exactly what Kay did. However, while the carefully handwritten pages might have been out of sight, they were not out of mind and every so often she couldn't help thinking the highs and lows of their three year courtship deserved a wider audience.

"It was 40 years ago when I first read them and I honestly felt like an intruder," says Kay, who grew up in Leeds and now lives in York. "In one letter Robert talked about how he kept Barbara's letters hidden so they could never be read by anyone but him. He said he treasured them like gems, and while I thought they were fascinating, I felt I had to put them to one side.

"About 10 years ago, I was talking to my cousin about the letters. When she mentioned about publishing them, I told her about Robert's secret drawer and how he had never wanted anyone else to touch them. To that, she simply replied, 'Oh I think 150 years is a decent enough interval'."

The letters, edited by Kay, have finally been published in a new book and are a lesson in the lost art of romance. Living 30 miles apart on Shetland in the 1850s, Robert and Barbara's courtship was not easy. In three years, they saw each other just a handful of times and with no telephones and no easy access to transport, letters were the only way they could keep in contact.

"Robert was a teacher, who worked at the same school as Barbara's father," says Kay. "That's how they got to know each other, but just as their relationship was beginning he got a new posting on a different part of the island.

"Today 30 miles is nothing and being able to contact loved ones when and where we want is something we all take for granted.

"There is one letter in which Barbara says she hasn't seen Robert for 16 months, but I guess it's true what they say, good things come to those who wait."

The many dozens of letters, written between 1858 and 1861 when the couple finally married, are a little piece of social history.

They talk of family events, they show how their hard but simple lives were regulated by the landscape and more importantly than all that they trace how a friendship blossomed into love.

"There's a tendency to think 19th-century men were quite cold characters, who never opened up about their feelings," says Kay. "But Robert was a bit of a new man. He was incredibly emotional and even knew about women's fashion.

"When I ask my husband what someone was wearing, the best he can normally come up with is, 'it was blue, I think", but here was a man 150 years ago who knew about flounces.

"There is a sense of equality between Robert and Barbara that you might not expect to find, but that's how Shetland society worked. While the men were out fishing, the women tended the croft. The duties were shared and there wasn't the same stark difference between the sexes which you might have found in big cities like Leeds and Manchester in the same period."

The fact the letters survived at all is something of a miracle. When they were passed to Kay's father, her aunt recommended they should be burned and while in storage in Huddersfield a fire destroyed part of the building. However, they did survive and getting them into print has been something of a labour of love.

"I'd tried to sell the idea on and off over the years and some publishers asked to see a sample of the letters," says Kay. "However, each time I was told they were far too sentimental for today's tastes. Romance has changed a lot in the last century and half, but I knew everyone still enjoys a love story."

In the book, Shetland A Love Story, the letters sit alongside contemporary photographs of the island taken by Mark Sinclair, whose work Kay discovered by accident.

"I was flicking through a photographic book I had bought as a Christmas present and there was one of Mark's images," she says. "It was like a lightbulb moment. I never wanted it to be about sepia photographs of Robert and Barbara when they were older. I wanted it to be about their courtship and Mark's photos seemed to capture the essence of the place they knew.

"They have a real timeless quality, although I know occasionally he had to wait a long time for a sheep to move its leg and cover up a distant telegraph pole.

"It's been a great partnership, but we'll only meet for the first time later this week at the official launch.

"I do joke with Mark sometimes that maybe one day our great grandchildren will find our emails and publish a book about how our friendship developed, but I suspect it wouldn't have quite as much appeal as the letters of Robert and Barbara."

Shetland A Love Story, priced 20, is available from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop on 0800 0153232 or online at www.yorkshirepost

bookshop.co.uk. Post and packing is 2.75.

THE LETTERS: 'WITHOUT YOU, I WOULD FEEL AS IF LIFE WERE A BLANK'

From Robert to Barbara, January 18, 1858

"...My love for you I have guarded with that jealous care with which misers guard their gold. I have kept it hidden in the recesses of my own soul. I considered it too sacred to be revealed to mortals and the dread of you not returning it and my determination never to marry till I had at least the prospect of supporting a wife in some degree of comfort made me anxious to conceal it from you. For that reason I have avoided seeing you as much as possible because I knew well that if placed often in your company I would be unable to conceal my attachment... Without you, I would feel as if life were a blank."

From Barbara to Robert, January 27, 1858

"I have often heard of 'love letters' and have seen a few which had the name, but till now I never had any idea what a real love letter was...I can never make out how it was you came to love me. It is really wonderful! You are the most generous noble-hearted man I ever saw and I love you more than you can ever know. I would rather have a corner in your heart than be loved by all the fickle young fellows daily to be met with."

From Barbara to Robert, June 13, 1860

"....Now I am not a good letter writer and therefore ought not to criticise perhaps, but I do think that when people can write well they should do it. What a beautiful letter was your last to me! I might have known that it was written at midnight, it was such a sleepy lifeless affair. It seems to me that you have been noddin' when you began to write...Just think of introducing a peat casting into a love letter. If you wished to let me know how they manage a peat casting...why not write a description of one, send it to Chambers' journal and send to me the number in which it appeared?

From Robert to Barbara, June 21, 1860

"I ought to apologise, dearest, for the very clumsy manner in which my last letter was expressed. I knew it was utterly worthless when I sent it, but as the mountain tops had been already gilded by the orient beams of morn, I had not time to rewrite it. The introduction of a peat casting was truly ludicrous were it not that at these, as well as at all other Shetland gatherings, there is, or at least appears to be, a good deal of lovemaking.

From Robert to Barbara, July 14, 1861

"To look back, it seems but a brief space since I wrote you my first letter and yet it is three and a half years...There may have been occasionally a very little misunderstanding between us but on the whole a more amiable correspondence was never carried on...In the future our happiness will depend on a great measure on ourselves and if in the evening of our days we can look back on our married life with as much satisfaction as we can do on our days of courtship we will be very happy indeed."