Bureaucrat’s lover, courageous for the most part (8)
I believe the answer is:
mandarin
'bureaucrat's' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'lover courageous for the most part' is the wordplay.
'lover' becomes 'man' (male lover).
'courageous' becomes 'daring' (daring can mean adventurous or courageous).
'for the most part' means to remove the last letter (most but not all of the letters).
'daring' with its final letter removed is 'darin'.
'man'+'darin'='MANDARIN'
(Other definitions for mandarin that I've seen before include "top official" , "Tongue" , "Important government official" , "Language formerly used by educated Chinese, or a kind of orange" , "High-ranking bureaucrat" .)