Refused to give husband the covers, and quite fierce about it (8)
I believe the answer is:
withheld
'refused' is the definition.
(withholding is a kind of refusing)
'covers and quite fierce about it' is the wordplay.
'covers' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters) (I've seen 'covers of' mean this).
'and' becomes 'with'.
'quite fierce' becomes 'held' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'about' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'with' with its middle taken out is 'wh'.
'wh'+'held'='whheld'
'whheld' enclosing 'it' is 'WITHHELD'.
'to give husband the' is the link.
This may not be correct. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for withheld that I've seen before include "Kept back, refused to hand over" , "Not given" , "Not issued" .)