Frollo kept his hand tight around Esmeralda's upper arm as his eyes darted down every darkened laneway and around every deserted square. He felt a pulsing fear, as if there was some beast or spectre abroad which wanted to snatch her from him.

Esmeralda walked quietly by his side, her face hidden by the cowl of her cloak. 'I can take myself home,' she'd told him once they'd peeled themselves off the pallet in his study. How reluctantly he'd let her go. How reluctant he always was to see her leave him.

The fear had come over him then – that if he bid her adieu at the cathedral doors he would never see her again. 'Walk across Paris, in the dark, alone? You shall not, and never again,' he'd said, and donned his cloak over his raiment. His hands had tucked her red locks away from sight beneath her hood. Let those who watched her dance see it under the sun; only he would see it by moonlight.

She led him to a very low part of Paris, and his mood darkened; Esmeralda did not belong her among the murk and villainy. But on she walked and the streets became lower still. Finally she unlocked the door of a dishevelled house onto a single room. Frollo had to duck through the doorway, and once inside his head grazed the ceiling. There was a brazier in one corner and a pallet lay on the floor before it. On the other side of the room was a table and a single chair.

Esmeralda looked at him, the beams overhead, the four walls. 'How you do take up space, Claude.'

'It is small,' he replied.

She twined her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him, tilting her head back to look up into his eyes. 'And how stern you are. I swear that your brow is only clear in sleep.'

'I concern myself with grave matters,' he said, frowning deeper, hoping to make her smile.

She did, and traced a finger over the ridges at the bridge of his nose. 'And yet you look so even when you are making love to me.'

'Ah, but that is a very grave matter indeed,' he said, and kissed her. Her mouth was so soft against his, and he felt his mind grow hazy. But then a thought intruded, fully formed and certain, and he broke the kiss. 'I don't want you to live here anymore,' he said suddenly. 'I want you to live with me.'

Her eyebrows shot up and she took half a step back. 'Claude! At the cathedral?'

'I don't live at the cathedral. I have a house on the rue Vondesse.'

Esmeralda just watched him, her expression one of doubt and perplexity.

She was going to say no to him? Why? She was offended at the thought of being his mistress? Quite possibly. She thought the rue Vondesse too grand and forbidding? Yes, that could be so. She didn't want him anymore? Frollo's hands tightened on her waist. No. He couldn't countenance that. 'What is it, petite bohémienne? Why do you withdraw from me?'

'Don't be foolish, Claude. If I live with you then we will be certain of being discovered.'

'If I cannot know that you are safe then I am certain of going mad.' He rubbed a thumb over her cheek, thinking. 'I was never able to do things by half, mon ange. It is all with me, or nothing. Seeing you in this place tonight has resolved me: I want you safe. I want you with me.'

'Oh,' she said, arch. 'You are resolved.' But then she studied his face, her eyes gentle. 'How very dear you have become to me in so short a time. I can't put you in danger. If we are discovered you will be banished, or worse.'

He breathed hard for a moment, scowling. 'So I am to leave you in this house that protects you when I cannot? With this floor that bears you up when I would bear you up?' He snatched up a cup from her wooden table and held it under her nose. 'With this cup which touches your lips when I am absent?' Her lips quirked in amusement, and his scowl deepened. 'I do not jest, Esmeralda!'

But still she smiled. 'It seems you are a poet as well as a priest. If you do not think of your reputation, foolish poet, then I must: I cannot live with you.'

Frollo's hand tightened on the cup. 'I am not accustomed to being refused.'

She laughed and flopped into the chair. 'Oh, I am sure of it. But still, no.'

He began to pace up and down the small room, his teeth working on a thumbnail. There was a tightness in his chest and he was sure it was because of her. Because she defied him? Nay, she may challenge him, and it would make his victory all the sweeter once he had stropped his mind against her own. What made it hard to breath was the nameless dread that there was something dogging their every step. Watching. Waiting. Was it a figment, or something more?

He whirled to face her. 'You speak of my position. What of yours? You cannot like being in this place,' he said, gesturing round at the peeling walls and uneven floorboards. 'You cannot like being hurried in and out of that cathedral like something shameful, with only enough time for me to – for us to –' His hand dropped to his side, helpless, and he swallowed down a mouthful of bitter self-reproach. She'd been innocent when she'd come to him. Stainless in deed, if perhaps not in thought. How he'd sullied her with abandon. With relish. He relished the thought even now.

'Claude, I dance in the streets for coin. Others have always thought me shameful. I rise above it. I always will.'

He threw himself at her feet. 'You will not be shameful. You will have a place, and be able to hold your head up. If you must have a pretence for being in my house than we will call you my housekeeper.'

'And give up my freedom? My dancing?'

'Yes,' he said, talking one of her hands and kissing her palm.

'Live in a grand house that I don't understand, with strange customs and rules that I couldn't even begin to fathom?'

'Yes. I will teach you. I will help you.'

She pursed her lips. 'Housekeeper. It is the thinnest of pretences.'

He gripped both her hands – that she did not refuse him outright gave him hope. 'Say yes, mon ange. Say yes and I will take you there now and you will have half of all that is mine. My bed. My table. You will be taken care of.' Fear made him desperate. It was not some tangible thing that stalked them through the Paris streets. It was his own fear. Someone was going to discover his earthly bliss, his tender feelings, and expose his misdeeds. Esmeralda would be ripped from him, and he would crumble under the weight of the world's reproach. He had to keep her close, to protect them both. It was the only course that he could see.

Again that amused look from Esmeralda. 'I will have a large house to clean, you mean, when before I had only this small apartment to scrub and dust.'

'Never mind the scrubbing and the dusting. I have a housemaid to see to such things.'

'A housemaid to take charge of as well! A housekeeper of yours has a great many responsibilities. Me – I only have to dance.'

Frollo pressed his feverish face into her lap a moment, and then looked up again. 'Come for me, petite bohémienne,' he implored. 'If you do not think of yourself in this, if it all amuses you so, then think of me, I beg you. I must have you under my protection otherwise I shall go spare.'

Her smiled faded and she studied him closely. 'I see that you are in earnest, mon cher,' she murmured, surprise colouring her voice.

'How could you doubt that I am anything but?'

Esmeralda took a long, slow breath. 'Well, then, Claude. I suppose my answer can only be yes.'

Frollo groaned and pressed his face against her thighs once more, relief making him weak. She stroked his hair and murmured pretty things that he only half heard. The dreadful fear had fallen back: he was outstripping it. If it drew close again then he would just have to find another way of outsmarting it. He was Claude Frollo. He would always find a way. He had to.

'Come, mon ange,' he said, standing up and offering her his hand. 'We will go now, and go quickly.'