Sheltered girl appearing in court before duke (10)
I believe the answer is:
cloistered
'sheltered' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'girl appearing in court before duke' is the wordplay.
'girl appearing' becomes 'lois' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'in' is an insertion indicator.
'court' becomes 'ct'.
'before' becomes 'ere' (usually literary).
'duke' becomes 'd'.
'lois' placed into 'ct' is 'cloist'.
'cloist'+'ere'+'d'='CLOISTERED'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for cloistered that I've seen before include "Being cut off from the world" , "Sheltered from outside society" , "with covered arcades" .)