Vexed in church before reading letters (9)
I believe the answer is:
chagrined
'vexed in' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both to do with human feelings as well as being past participle verbs.
Perhaps you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'church before reading letters' is the wordplay.
'church' becomes 'ch' (common abbreviation).
'before' says to put letters next to each other.
'letters' indicates an anagram.
'reading' anagrammed gives 'agrined'.
'ch'+'agrined'='CHAGRINED'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for chagrined that I've seen before include "Mortified" , "was vexing" .)