Fiction: The Ghost in the Library

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are supplied by Sean Jeating and are hosted at River's blog here. This week's prompts are: countenance, favourite, once, pillow, regret and/or bags, faces, machos, steps , swearboarding (makeup but related to waterboarding or skatingboarding and cursing). Another optional prompt is Charlotte's colour of the month - Smoky Rose. 
    The aim of Words for Wednesday is to use one or all of the prompts to write something - ie, a story, a poem, an essay or any forms of writing, fiction or nonfiction, basically write anything you want.

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Fiction: The Ghost in the Library
No one knew who the ghost was in Madam Maxim's manor library but all were certain there was one. Madam's housekeeper, butler, maids, relatives and visitors to the manor all claimed they saw it.
    At the beginning of the spring season, James Washington Maxwell, a friend of Madam's granddaughter's friend's cousin, was invited for a long visit at the manor. Ghosts to him were all nonsense and catawampuses. He had no fear of encountering them. 
    After two evenings of behaving himself, James faked a buggy stomach and turned in for the night. When all was silent, he snuck into the library.
    It was a magnificent space that took up the entire third floor. Slanted moonlight came from the three sets of French windows on one side and fell on the half circular wall shelves full of old tomes with a ladder to get to the near-ceiling, almost unreachable, top shelves where the oldest and rarest books resided. 
    James was a collector of rare books but often, he sold them to accumulated a grand fortune to marry his sweetheart Jezzabella and give her the lavish lifestyle she desired. For over three years, he had tried and failed. In Madam's library, he hoped to find some rare treasures to succeed this time.
    Looking around, he couldn't help but compared this room to his tiny corner in his small rented house where five of his secondhand books sat on a small table by the window. Wanting to experience what it was like to live in such a grand room, he sat down on one of two large leather couches in front of the unlit fireplace. Holding up his hands, he imagined holding a book when an open book dropped and fitted into his palms. For a long moment, he stared at it in disbelief just as a chill went through him. On the small table beside him, the short, fat lit candle he had brought along was flickering but didn't bring any warmth to his freezing fingers.
    Since the book was right in front of him, he read a few lines. A familiar chord swept through his memory. This was his favourite book as a child. Every night before bed, his father would read to him and his sisters a little bit from it. They couldn't afford more books so when his father finished the book, he would flip back to the beginning and start over. James loved listening to his father's strong, gruff voice as he drifted off to dreamland lying on a thin pillow.
    He closed the book with a loud thud. No, he wasn't here to relive any childhood memory, he was here for rare books. Gazing around him and up at the top shelves, he spotted a volume in deep maroon. He stood up but some force pushed him back down, slipped the book he still held and placed it on the table beside him. Involuntary, his hands lifted and another opened book fell into them - a book he had read many times at college. Whenever he was scolded by a professor or when one of the rich student mocked him or swearboarded him, he would hide in his room and read this book which his mother gifted him on his seventeenth birthday. Reading it had soothed him and kept the faces of his family ever present so that his days weren't so lonely.
    He slammed the book closed and tossed it on the side table. The loud thump made him grimaced. Books were precious to him and he regretted being so harsh with it. A grandfather clock chimed and reminded him how late it was. But he waited to see if the ghost was going to try a third time. 
    The silence was almost unbearable, as if it was challenging him to do something. But as he strolled toward the shelves, as he shifted the ladder toward the middle shelf and climbed the wooden steps, nothing stopped him. With a stretch of his long arm, he pulled the red volume down and descended the ladder. He paused and looked around. Would the ghost stop him from taking books out of the library?
    For once, he had no answers to his query. Always, he had no doubts of his actions but here in this space, his mind wavered between uncertainties.
    He sat down on the couch and opened the red volume. It was full of poetry by a writer named Heathcliff Withers in the late 1800s. Only until recently, when any rare material from the past was worth something did Withers' name gained notoriety. This volume may be 200 years old and would fetch about 50 million or more. 
    The words swam before him. This book was his chance to marry Jezza but was it what he wanted? She had given him hope after hope but never any real evidence she loved him. His sisters had stressed that if Jezza truly loved him, she would marry him without a fortune. His father had taught him no man need to be macho or rich, he just need to be good. But Withers' wife took his children and left him when he lost his fortune. No one helped him when he needed it and he died in poverty and alone.
    James took in a long breath and let it out. His sigh echoed in the room and he thought, someone was sighing with him. He turned a page though he had not took in any words he had read. Something slipped from the pages and dropped to the floor. He bended down and picked it up - a dried baby's breath - a particular flower that his mother loved which his father often brought her. The air turned slightly chilly.
    When he sat up, there was someone sitting on the facing couch - a man with a pale countenance with shadows under his eyes. James didn't recognized him but the longing look in his eyes matched his own. The candle's light flickered out and when it came back on, the man was gone.
    Had he hallucinated the man or did he see a real ghost? The air slowly became warmer. James forgot what he was thinking. As he stared down at the book in his hands, it occurred to him he had no desire to gain his fortune by crook. He had prepared to take at least six or seven volumes and ready a bag in his pocket but now he realized that was a mistake he didn't want to make. He put the flower back inside the book, closed it and set it gently down on top of the two books on the table. 
    If Jezza didn't want to marry him because he had no fortune then he must accept it and move on. He knew he wasn't quite a good man as his father but at least, he shouldn't do something to make himself worst.
    With his decisions made, James relaxed. Around him, the silence seemed less oppressed. He opened his hands and waited. A book slipped down into his palms. Leaning back, he started reading.