Grouchy stepmother ill-treated Rose (5-8)
I believe the answer is:
short-tempered
'grouchy' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'stepmother ill-treated rose' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
an anagram of 'stepmother' is 'shorttempe' which is located in the answer.
The remaining letters 'red' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for short-tempered that I've seen before include "Testy" , "Impatient" , "Easily moved to anger" , "Easily riled" , "Quick to anger" .)