I can confirm that this escaping issue still exists in v1.4.6.
I had the identical scenario, trying to use Font Awesome to render a Home icon using the HTML <i class="icon-home"></i>
I fixed it by changing line 265 from
$link_output .= '<a href="' . esc_url( $link['url'] ) . '" rel="v:url" property="v:title">' . esc_html( $link['text'] ) . '</a>';
to
$link_output .= '<a href="' . esc_url( $link['url'] ) . '" rel="v:url" property="v:title">' . $link['text'] . '</a>';