Lover embraces wife, a timid little creature (4)
I believe the answer is:
fawn
'little creature' is the definition.
(I know that fawn is a type of young mammal)
'lover embraces wife' is the wordplay.
'lover' becomes 'fan' (synonyms).
'embraces' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'wife' becomes 'w' (abbreviation).
'fan' placed around 'w' is 'FAWN'.
'a timid' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may belong to another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for fawn that I've seen before include "to dance attendance" , "Young deer - beige colour" , "Light grey-brown colour" , "Behave obsequiously like young deer" , "crawl" .)